99-Year-Old Woman Recounts Harrowing Carjacking In Rancho Cucamonga
CORONA (CBSLA) — A 99-year-old Corona woman recounted her harrowing ordeal: being carjacked and how she fought her carjacker tooth and nail.
Virginia Bautista said she was terrified when the carjacker drove her through the Inland Empire for an hour and a half.
"She wouldn't stop at the stops at all. She was speeding 80 to 90 miles an hour. What scared me was she almost hit a truck," Bautista said.
The carjacking happened in the parking lot of the Rancho Cucamonga Jail.
Bautista was in the passenger seat waiting for her daughter to get back in the car when, Monique Cadena, 24, newly released from jail, hopped in, according to Bautista.
"So I said: 'What are you doing?' She says: 'We are going to go for a ride. I say: 'No I've got to wait for my daughter. If she comes out and doesn't find the car, she's going to be scared,' " Bautista recalled.
Her daughter, Elizabeth Mory, was scared and hoped her mom remembered what she told her in the past.
"Along time ago, I told her if something happens like this, don't scare because the heart will work against you," Mory told CBS2's Crystal Cruz.
Bautista has high blood pressure and knew this kind of ride would give anyone a heart attack, especially when the two started arguing in the car.
"She grabbed the jar, and she was going to hit me. I said: 'Go ahead and hit me'," the victim recalled.
They were also fighting over Bautista's purse.
"I said: 'If you don't leave that purse alone, I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to hit you'," Baustista said to her kidnapper, who later dropped her off at a gas station.
The car eventually ran out of gas, and Cadena was arrested later that day on suspicion of carjacking and kidnapping.