HARTLAND — A 15-year-old local boy is accused of stealing a truck without the keys then driving it on a high-speed chase until he lost control and crashed the truck on North Street, police say.

It is unclear how the boy, whose name is not being released, was able to steal the truck, a red 1999 Chevrolet S-10, according to Chief Deputy Dale Lancaster, of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department, and the truck’s owner, 60-year-old David Boyden.

“I know very little about what happened,” Boyden said. “I called the police after my truck disappeared and the next time I saw it, it was wrecked.”

The truck was reported stolen around 8:20 p.m. Soon afterward Boyden’s niece, who lives nearby on Pleasant Street, said she heard the truck drive by her house and was able to identify it by its loud engine.

“My aunt called us to tell us the truck had been stolen. We were sitting here, my mom was on the phone with her, when we thought we heard it go by. So we got in my car and went to look,” said Heather Householder, 26, who said she jumped into her car along with her boyfriend, Brandon Belanger, to chase down the truck. Several of her cousins got into another car, and the two vehicles started to chase the stolen truck, Householder said.

“He wasn’t going to stop. He was just going to wreck us,” she said, describing the scene when they tried to cut the truck off and talk to the driver. After almost an hour of chasing the truck, while simultaneously talking to police to tell them which way he was headed, drivers of the two cars lost track of the truck as it appeared to head for the nearby town of St. Albans on Commercial Street, Householder said.

They had turned around when the truck appeared behind them, said Householder, adding that they started yelling at the truck’s driver to stop and he finally got out on North Street, yelling and saying the truck was his. Householder said she was on the phone with a police dispatcher, and police arrived, cutting the driver off near Shur Fine, a grocery store, Householder said.

According to Lancaster, the boy tried to accelerate too fast, lost control and hit a culvert, which caused the truck to roll over on North Street.

He is charged with theft, driving to endanger, failure to stop and operating without a license. He was taken to Sebasticook Valley Hospital for treatment of minor injuries and then arrested. He has been released to his parents and is scheduled to appear Aug. 6 in court, Lancaster said.

At the time it disappeared, the truck was parked in a right of way that Boyden owns, just out of sight of his house on Great Moose Drive. He said he wasn’t sure how the boy was able to steal it, since the keys were not in the vehicle. The damage is substantial, Lancaster said.

“If he’d just taken the truck, it wouldn’t have been so much of an issue; but he tried to run my niece off the road, and he almost ran some other people off the road,” Boyden said. “He needs to learn a lesson if he’s endangering people. If he was just going for a joy ride, it wouldn’t have been such an issue.”

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

[email protected]