Seattle grandmother takes on carjacker by clinging to windshield

SEATTLE — Donna Crews looked down at the blue cast gripping her broken knee, and pointed out the eight staples holding together the bloody wound on the back of her head.

Despite the painful injuries, the 66-year-old grandmother says she feels blessed she’s alive to tell her terrifying story.

“I'm amazed that nobody was killed and I wasn't killed. Amazed," she said.

Crews told KIRO 7 she simply reacted—after seeing a man jumping into her running car, when she stepped out to toss some garbage into a bin in front of her Wallingford home.

“He tried to put it in gear, and at first, he couldn’t,” she said. “It gave me time to establish myself up on the hood, holding the windshield wipers. Now, what I thought he would do, I don't know, but I was more concerned about my purse and my phone, and losing that.”

Crews says after she clung to the windshield, the carjacker jerked the car back and forth, trying to toss her off. Crews says she wouldn’t budge. But when the carjacker sped down the street at 44th and Woodland Park Avenue North, Crews had no chance. She was thrown off the hood, tumbling into the street as the carjacker tore around a corner two blocks away.

“All this time I was screaming for help,” she said. “I screamed “Help, somebody! He's got my car!"”

Within minutes, Seattle police were in pursuit, doing everything they could to stop it. The carjacking suspect hit two police cars while they were trying to get in front of it.

Mel Mesick saw the speeding car veer through a parking lot of a nearby 7-Eleven store. “There were pedestrians everywhere,” Mesick said.  “It was amazing no-one got hit!”

Mesick and other witnesses told KIRO 7 the hood of the stolen car was sticking straight up.

“It was straight up in the air,” Mesick said. “And I was thinking, how is this person even driving?”

After speeding through Phinney Ridge neighborhood streets for another mile, the 31-year-old carjacking suspect finally crashed into a utility pole and was promptly arrested.

Donna Crews says even after her admittedly risky near-death experience, she'd do it all over again.

“I’m automatically a person that says “what can I do about this?” I'm not one about laying down and letting things happen!"

KIRO