Can Ny Tow A Car With No Plate And Crush It All Within 3 Hours?

I’ll start by saying I’m posting this on behalf of a family member so I’ll try to give as much info as I have on the situation.

My family member moved to Bronx, NY from Pennsylvania about a year ago. While in PA she purchased a car and after a while she started having issues with it. Long story short, she ended up parking it in PA at friends houses and getting another car. While living in NY she would periodically get notices from her friends that she had gotten tickets or the car needed to be moved and she would go about getting that addressed and handled.

Now this next part probably wasn’t the best decision on her part but she ended up using the plate on the PA car for the NY car. I tried getting the whole story as to why but just gave up since nothing made sense. From what I can tell the NY car isn’t hers but her friends car.

Here is the issue, she finally got the PA car working and was able to bring it to NY, but she apparently parked it on the street with no plate. Again, I know, not the best move on her part. Mistakes were for sure made.

Well, they towed the car this morning around 5am and by the time she was able to get to the tow yard, around 8:30am, they informed her the car was just crushed.

I would think they would at least try to give a day or two for someone to either try to get it out or get things out of it, but crushing it all within 3-4 hours?

She said she still had about 5k owed on the car, is there anything she could do or is she just SOL?

Thanks!