Carjacking Suspect Killed In Crash After Stealing Good Samaritan's Vehicle
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A man is recovering from injuries -- mainly to his face -- after he stopped to help someone on Highway 99, but was attacked and carjacked.
The wild sequence was then capped off when the man's alleged attacker crashed the man's truck and died.
Michael Markell has a swollen eye and deep gashes on his head.
"It's hard to process but I believe in karma," Markell said. "I'm glad I'm not dead. I hurt, but I'll live."
Markell has his wife and two boys by his side after he survived the wild ride that started when he stopped his truck to help a man walking on the freeway.
"I try helping everybody and their mommas out," Markell said.
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That help turned into a horror story when the man asked to go to Fresno and Markell refused. The man then started punching Markell in the face.
"I was getting hit, so I opened up my driver's side door," Markell said. "And we both end up flying out the driver's door."
The pedestrian-turned-suspected carjacker didn't go more than a few miles down the highway before he hit a guardrail with Markell's truck.
"He ends up wrecking, rolling it like four or five times, ejects himself, and kills himself," Markell said.
Markell says he and his family were planning a move out of state in the morning. Now, they are left without the family vehicle and everything they had inside it.
Markell's wife, Andrea Gause, described the loss.
"All of our clothes, my son's formula, cereal, things like that," Gause said. "Like everything, birth certificates, everything."
Markell's instincts told him to help a man in need, but next time, he'll think it through first.
"I'll still help somebody," Markell said, "but I'm definitely re-think my process."
Markell is now bloodied and beaten and left with a new sense of how to pay to it forward. The family says they don't know how long it will take for them to get a new vehicle. For now, they are staying in a hotel, trying to figure out what to do next.
