A woman with a pregnant sister and five children in their care, in daylight at a suburban mall, encounters the fear from a gun being pointed at them during a carjacking.
“I don’t know if I could have been prepared. I was so caught off guard,” said a woman named Jessica who called Monday morning on the Jeff Wagner Show. She claims it happened Friday morning at about 11:30 a.m. in the Bayshore parking lot in Glendale, Wis.
The TODAY’S TMJ4 story about the incident says it happened on the Five Guys part of the parking lot; a story on WITI-TV says that it happened in the Kohl’s parking lot on the eastern side of the Bayshore area. The victims initially did not reveal their identity in the WITI-TV story.
“We were in the process of getting our kids out of the car. A black guy walks up to me and I thought initially he was going to ask me for money. I thought that was going to be awkward or uncomfortable in front of my kids,” said Jessica.
“He took a gun right out of his sweatshirt pocket. He cocked the gun and swung it right at us. He seemed to get more and more agitated as we had to get the kids. We were screaming at him. I don’t know if he didn’t realize there were more children in the car.”
As Jessica put it, two children were still inside the car, and her sister had to pull them out of the car as the suspect stole it without regard for the children on the scene.
“My sister threw my daughter out of the car. If she wouldn’t have pulled back my stroller with my four-month-old son, he would have absolutely run him over. I have no doubt.”
Police eventually discovered the vehicle south of the mall near Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood. They have not found the suspect.
“It seems they’re fairly confident they’re going to catch him,” said Jessica, who also claimed the suspect used another stolen vehicle to come to the scene. “I don’t want my car back.”
Jessica says she has some “scrapes and bruises, but it could have been so much worse.”
