PEORIA, Ariz. — A man is in custody after stealing a car with two 10-year-old boys in the back seat.
The boys were quickly able to escape and the man drove more than 15 miles before being confronted by a Peoria restaurant employee.
“I turned around and a man was in the driver’s seat so literally as I got out of my car, he got right behind me and pushed his way in,” described Wendy Grace, whose car was stolen by a suspect Wednesday afternoon.
Sheer terror took its toll as Grace’s 10-year-old boys were still in the backseat when the stranger started to drive their car away.
“I tried pulling him out of the car, but I couldn’t get him and while I was doing that, the kids managed to get out of the car and then he drove off, got on the freeway,” Grace said. It happened at the Circle K at Seventh Avenue and Loop 101.
Grace said her gut instinct kicked in and all she could do was react, “I keep going in my mind like what if, what if they couldn’t get out, what if it was a baby.”
That same thought went through Amelia Blount’s mind too when just minutes later, the suspect pulled up to Carolina’s Mexican restaurant in Peoria. Right away, Blount knew something wasn’t right.
Blount said the man came across the counter inside, acting completely erratic, pulling on locked doors. When he came back outside, she followed him into the car he was trying to drive away.
“I realize the start and stop button is right there so I just keep pushing it, trying to shut it off and it’s not shutting off so I’m trying to grab the wheel just trying to distract him so we’re not getting out far,” Blount explained.
But that didn’t work and the suspect started to reverse across the parking lot with Blount still in the car.
Finally, Blount said she was able to stop him from driving any further. “He just started running. All I could see out of the corner of my eye was him trying to open other doors again,” she said.
Eventually, 41-year-old Shawn Dillman of Phoenix was taken into custody.
“Obviously I don’t want to encourage people to hop in random cars with random people but I would probably do that again just to save others because I knew that wasn’t his car and I knew something was off about the situation so just to help,” she said.
