The law caught up with a wanted man on the streets of North Carolina this week.

The man, James Meyers, was driving his 10-year-old daughter to school in Concord, northeast of Charlotte, when a police car pulled him over for a broken brake light.

But when the officer ran his license, he confronted him with an older crime, from 14 years ago. “Sir, I don’t know how to tell you this,” the officer began. Mr. Meyers had a 2002 warrant out for his arrest for failing to return a VHS movie rental of “Freddy Got Fingered.”

“I just laughed,” Mr. Meyers, 37, recalled.

The officer let Mr. Meyers go and told him to show up later at the police station, where officers took him to a magistrate’s office, patted him down and put him in handcuffs.