Police tape line.Photo:Getty Images
Getty Images
A 7-year-old girl saved her younger sister after their grandfather’s truck she was in was carjacked on the way home from picking them up from a Nashville daycare center on Wednesday afternoon.
McDowell, 27, abandoned the vehicle and gun after a spike strip deflated the car’s tires and caused the suspect to crash on the right side of the I-440, MNPD said.
“We started fighting,” Mena told WSMV after McDowell, who he said was wearing a ski mask, had opened the door to the driver’s side of the truck and tried to force Mena out of the vehicle. “But my T-shirt got all broken. He grabbed me from my T-shirt and threw me to the ground.”
Mena lost consciousness as a result and McDowell took off in the truck, with Stephanie and Amy 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.”
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“I was fighting with this guy,” Mena said before he recounted Amy’s brave actions. “She jumped from the truck, and she pulled her sister out of the truck so they could escape and be safe.”
“The materialistic things come and go. But my girls don’t,” Mena added.
MNPD said in the media release that detectives from the Specialized Investigations Division’s Neighborhood Safety Unit, who were already in pursuit of McDowell, had tracked down the stolen Toyota Tundra pickup truck to Sadler Avenue. There, the suspect ditched the vehicle and ran into the woods and onto the railroad tracks, where a police canine team apprehended McDowell.
MNPD did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
source: people.com
