A suburban woman is warning others after being chase and beaten during a violent carjacking that occurred over the weekend in broad daylight at a gas station in Midlothian.
“I really thought he was going to shoot and kill me,” said the victim, who didn’t want to be identified.
The mother of three said what happened to her at the gas station in Midlothian was traumatizing.
“Every time I close my eyes it just keeps replaying in the back of my head,” she said.
The 33-year-old stopped by Thornton's near 148th and Cicero before 2 p.m. on Sunday to get something to drink. She was walking back to her car parked at a gas pump when she said a man came out of nowhere.
“I did not see him. He was opening my door as I was opening,” she said. “He bent down with a gun pointed at me and we made eye contact.”
The victim took off running. She didn’t think the man would chase after her but he did. She said she almost made it to the front door of the gas station, but the man grabbed her coat-- knocking them both to the ground.
Local
“He first put the gun to my back and then he hit me with the gun to my head multiple times,” she said.
The victim said the man believed to be in his twenties demanded the keys to her silver car—a 2005 Infiniti.
“He was saying 'b---, where’s the key,” she said. “'Stop playing with me I will kill you, I will blow your brains out right now.'”
The man eventually got away with her car. The woman said several people witnessed what happened, but no one stepped in to help.
“There was literally a lady about nine feet away from me, (and she) just froze,” she said. “She didn’t move. She was just frozen. She didn’t know what to do.”
Midlothian Police issued a bulletin for other departments to be on the look out for the stolen car. The victim said it’s been spotted several times in Chicago, but so far no one has been arrested.
“People work hard for their things and for you to just come and take it, (and to) savagely attack a person like that,” she said. “He didn’t have to attack me like that.”
The man was last seen wearing a black warm-up suit style jacket or vest with blue sleeves, according to a police bulletin.
“They need to give them harsher punishments. It shouldn’t be no bond, it shouldn’t be none of that,” she said. “This is like a game to them, like a real life game, like they said they’re out here playing Grand Theft Auto in real life.”
The Midlothian Police Department is part of a carjacking task force involving multiple other police departments. The Midlothian police chief told NBC 5 since being activated the task force has arrested 21 people who were in possession of a stolen or hijacked vehicles and recovered eight stolen cars.
