A 7-year-old girl is being called a hero after she saved her younger sister when their grandfather’s truck she was riding in was carjacked.
The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said Elijah Malik McDowell, a convicted felon on probation, had evaded police after he previously carjacked a Dodge Charger by holding the 35-year-old victim at gunpoint near the Super 8 Motel on Murfreesboro Pike.
McDowell, 27, then abandoned the car and the gun he allegedly was carrying after a spike strip deflated the vehicle’s tires and caused the suspect to crash.
McDowell ran to a nearby residential area where he attempted to carjack Luis Mena’s truck after he had picked up his granddaughters Stephanie, 3, and Amy, 7, from daycare, WSMV News reported.
“We started fighting,” Mena told the news outlet. He said McDowell was wearing a ski mask and had opened the driver’s door to his truck and tried to force him out. “But my T-shirt got all broken. He grabbed me from my T-shirt and threw me to the ground.”
Mena lost consciousness and that’s when McDowell hopped inside and took off in the truck, with the young girls still in the back seat.
“What made me conscious again was when one of my little kids cried,” Mena said, per WSMV. “That was my biggest worry — not only my truck getting stolen, but with my girls in it.”
The cries Mena heard were from Stephanie. “She jumped from the truck, and she pulled her sister out of the truck so they could escape and be safe.”
MNPD released a statement saying police had tracked down the stolen Toyota Tundra pickup truck but the suspect had ditched it and ran into the woods and onto the railroad tracks. A police canine team eventually found him.
MNPD said McDowell was treated at a hospital for dog bites to his foot and was booked and charged on Thursday morning with the following: two counts of carjacking, two counts of felony evading arrest, unlawful gun possession by a convicted felon, gun use during the commission of a violent felony, possessing a “Glock switch” that makes a gun fully automatic, aggravated assault for driving at the two children, reckless driving, resisting arrest and driving on a revoked license.
His bond was set at $211,000 by a judicial commissioner.
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