Malden Carjacking Victim Says Stick Shift Saved Her Baby
MALDEN (CBS) - A woman who was carjacked with her baby in the back seat is talking about her ordeal. She became involved in the chaos that followed a bank robbery in Saugus.
It was Friday evening after the robbers had just hit the bank and were fleeing into Malden with police close behind.
READ: One Dead After Saugus Bank Robbery
The woman did not want to reveal her identity.
"I saw all the cop cars coming down, so I did realize that something big was happening," she told WBZ-TV's Jim Armstrong.
But the young mom never realized she was about to become intimately involved. Three men who had just robbed the bank in Saugus were now on foot and in trouble.
She was just coming home from work with her daughter in the back seat when she nearly drove into the suspects in the parking lot of her own apartment complex.
She says, "When I turned around to look and see where they were they were at my window already."
They showed her a gun, and offered a quick explanation.
"Just that they had done some really bad things and the cops were after them and they didn't want to hurt me," she says. "They were just pleading with me for my car, more than anything, please, we need your car."
She begged for time to get her five month old out of her car seat, but they wouldn't wait.
She says, "I was barely out of the car before one was sitting in the driver's seat and then I didn't have her out of the car yet and the other was already sitting in the passenger seat."
But her car is a five-speed, something the bad guys hadn't counted on. They kept stalling out; the car kept lurching offering precious seconds to rescue the baby. The mother is certain that if her car did not have a stick shift, the robbers would have taken off with her baby.
Just then, a Malden Police officer arrived on foot. There was a gunfight that ended with one of the suspects being shot and killed.
