ST. LOUIS — A woman was carjacked and run over with her own car Sunday afternoon. Now, she’s recounting the attack that she said was the most frightening thing she'd ever experienced in her life.
"I'm scared to death," she said.
The victim, who did not want to show her face and asked only to be identified by her first name, told St. louis police shortly after noon Sunday, she got out of her car and was about to walk inside her neighborhood Schnucks off Loughborough. That’s when several teens approached her and first complimented her on her Nike tennis shoes.
"These four kids come up to me and they said ‘You got some really nice shoes on, ma'am.’ I was like, ‘Well thank you.’ They were like, ‘Can we have five dollars?’"
She told the kids after she left the south city store she would help them, but out of the blue:
“The tall boy comes up to me and slaps my hands and knocks my cellphone, my keys and my phone out of my hand and pick up all that stuff and throws it to another kid who gets into my car," she told 5 On Your Side’s Robert Townsend.
Police said the 15-year-old boy gave the victim's car keys to a 16-year-old boy.
“I start banging on the trunk of my car, ‘Get out of my car! Get out of my car!’ and I'm screaming to people in the parking lot,” she said.
She told police the boy twice intentionally ran her over.
"He put the car in reverse, hits me in my chest area, knocks me down and then starts to run over me and then ran over the bottom of my body," she said.
She says the boy tried to hit her a third time, but that a Schnucks employee dragged her away from the moving car.
The 105-pound mom suffered two fractured ribs, cuts and now has neck and back pain.
All four of the teens involved were eventually taken into custody. Police also recovered the victim's car.
"I believe here in St. Louis we can still turn this thing around," said James Clark, the Urban League's director of public safety.
Clark said more proactive, neighborhood engagement can help solve teen violence in St. Louis.
"It's about how many resources can we get into the neighborhoods," he said. "What kind of infrastructure can we put in place so that our neighborhoods don't get this barren again?"
The victim said during that terrifying time, she just kept thinking about her three kids and her husband of 22 years.
"I'm here for my family,” she said. “They still need me."