News

Actions

Florida mom fights off pair of carjackers to protect kids in backseat

Posted at 10:18 PM, Jan 20, 2016
and last updated 2016-01-21 00:18:05-05
By Amanda Jackson

CNN

(CNN) — Never come between a mother and her children. A couple of would-be carjackers in Florida found this out the hard way.

A mother who had stopped at a gas station in Hialeah Monday night saw two people in ski masks charge at the car next to her’s at the gas pump.

The woman in the other car was able to lock herself into her vehicle before the men could get inside. She hurriedly drove off. So the would-be robbers turned their attention to the mother’s car. The woman — who was not identified — was standing outside her car pumping gas.

The men tried to jump into the vehicle, but were fought off by the mother. The men didn’t know the woman’s two children were in the backseat of the car. She jumped into the car, yanking one suspect out of the driver’s seat and tossing him away from her vehicle.

“She was a mom, and what that bad guy didn’t know, in the backseat of that car were two kids,” Carl Zogby of the Hialeah Police Department told CNN affiliate WSVN. “She wasn’t gonna let them be taken, so she fought, she dragged the guy out of the car, and they both ran away like cowards.”

The two suspects made off in a getaway car that was quickly caught by police.

A police officer near the gas station saw the suspects’ speeding car and began to follow it before it crashed into a fence, Zogby told CNN affiliate WSVN.

Nicholas Rosado, 19, and an unidentified juvenile suspect were both charged with attempted carjacking. Rebecca Utria, 21, the suspected getaway driver, was charged with attempted carjacking and fleeing from police.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.