Of course, this type of negect/abuse isn’t covered by warranty, so he essentially shot himself in the foot.
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A blatant case of ignoring Rule 1 of car ownership…Read the Flakin’ Owners Manual !
My schadenfreude is screaming…
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i accidentally left mine in 4 lo once, could only go 45 mph. Not a jeep but no harm
Well hey, the car was going to wear out sometime anyway. Just hastened it a little. Sell as a mechanic special.
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I know several people who screwed up (mostly female… Can I still say that?) and damaged their own property (homes, vehicles) and made insurance claims to right the destruction.
Some have hit garages, other cars in the driveway, spilled bleach on interiors, etcetera. Sometimes cars are “vandalized” by their owners!
CSA
As various chunks of the block and pan fell onto the pavement it would seem that someone would have hailed him down before it did that much damage. And I’m surprised that the clutch plate didn’t blow out before the bottom of the block fell off.
Maybe there are reasons for all of those warnings in the owners manual 
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RTFM
No one reads the warnings, just the lawyers after the fact. “Failure to warn” is a what a lot of ambulance chasers sue for.
Have to wonder if they forgot to properly set the Jeep or simply did not know.
Anything’s possible,you can meet owners who know what they’re doing and other’s that really don’t have a clue. I’ll admit I’ve never flat towed but know a few people who could show me the right way to do it.
You’re making me think bad thoughts now. When we bought our last Acura, they had a new owner BBQ to get acquainted. Everybody gave their presentation: Service manager, parts, sales, etc. Essentially providing all the owner’s manual information verbally, plus the other dealer wisdom. Now I’m wondering if it was to avoid warranty issues rather than give us a good time.
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Your Acura dealer experience is in another league compared to my parents Honda and Toyota dealers. There’s a ton of information included in modern owners manual but not everyone cracks thiers open to really know. We’ve never been invited to a BBQ from a dealer but a co-worker was given a driving school on how her new Outback would handle various road surfaces and conditions so that she was totally comfortable driving the car. Some dealers we’ve met couldn’t care less as long as they make a sale.
Years ago when I was towing my dune buggy, after hitching the buggy to the truck I would reach into the buggy and start the engine to be assured that it was in neutral and nobody had bumped the shift lever into gear.
The dune buggy didn’t come with an owners manual, this is a matter of taking precaution, not a matter of reading a 700 page book. People make mistakes.
In this case they should have had the transfer case in neutral, the transmission in gear. They had the transfer case in 4L, a short pull from neutral.
Looks like a good hellcat transplant to me. Good YouTube swap for next owner. Motor, t-case, trans, driveshafts, and so on. Not hard to find a rolled Jeep. Lots of bloggers would love to snap this up.
Will be at copart in 2 weeks.
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I wonder how fast the engine turned before the crankshaft sheared.
I don’t think this is an issue of not reading the owner’s manual. Leaving it in 4L and in first is akin to crashing into a bridge abutment. There’s no need to state the obvious in the owner’s manual
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I can see neutral for t-case. But why leave it in gear? It don’t matter? Does it?
For flat towing you would not leave the vehicle in gear. All four wheels are down.
The stock Rubicon has a 4 to 1 transfer case (and 4:10 ring and pinion sets) And in first gear the top speed at redline would be 3 or so MPH. In deep sand in 4 lo my 6 speed rubicon was screaming at 15 mph in 6 gear. And in 4 hi its to weak to pull any gear other than first. Even with 8 psi in the tires. Rock crawling in first gear mine idles around at ½ a MPH in 1st
Probably worst case scenario for a flat towing vehicle to experience would be a stick shift Rubicon in 4 lo and first. The low T case gear. The low axle gear. The lowish compression of the 6 cylinder won’t overcome the traction of the tires. The huge contact patch of the four stock tires won’t scoot…pretty much worst case scenario if the lockers were engaged. I would have thought the pressure plate/clutch might have failed first though.
Unfortunately, not everybody is a gearhead, and don’t think about things the way you and I would
And common sense isn’t so common . . . 
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Yeah. The transfer case out of gear is what I meant.
Many people have towed with both out of gear though. One of the bigger selling points of the Jeep wrangler is that it can be flat towed easily without having to buy a drive train decoupler or pull fuses. Some vehicles can’t be flat towed at all depending on transmission lubrication methods.