Detectives in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend were searching for two men as they investigated the death of a woman who was fatally struck by her own vehicle while trying to stop a carjacking that occurred with her 6-year-old son in the car.
Alexa Stakley, 29, was carjacked shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Thursday while picking up her son at the home of a babysitter after wrapping up a shift waiting tables, according to the police.
After putting the sleeping 6-year-old inside her 2022 silver Honda SUV, Ms. Stakley walked back toward the babysitter’s house to retrieve an item, according to a police report. As she turned back, Ms. Stakley saw her moving.
She was seen “running toward her Honda and was heard screaming for her child,” the police report said.
Moments later, Ms. Stakley was struck by the vehicle, suffering a fatal wound to the head. Shortly afterward, two men were seen running away from the area, abandoning the vehicle nearby, the police said. Police officers found the child inside the car unharmed.
Carjackings have been called “an important public safety threat” by the Department of Justice, which earlier this year announced it had established 11 task forces to combat the crime in areas of particular concern, like Philadelphia, Chicago and Tampa, Fla.
Nationwide, carjacking has historically been challenging to track because police departments do not report that type of crime in a consistent manner, said Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Carjackings soared in many cities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, crime data suggests that they have declined in some cities, like Washington, D.C., but climbed in others, like Milwaukee. Law enforcement officials say many carjackings have been carried out by teenagers.
According to the F.B.I.’s most recent annual crime report, some 25,400 carjackings were reported to the police in 2022, an 8.1 percent increase over the number of cases the year before. But Mr. Piquero said that data from cities that make crime data available in real time suggests carjackings have become less common in much of the country over the past couple of years. That is consistent with a broader drop in violent crime, he said.
Overall, criminologists have attributed the rise in carjackings and routine car thefts in recent years to more than one factor.
Push-button ignitions have made it easier for criminals to start vehicles without snatching keys from a driver. Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions made used cars more valuable. And because many of the carjackers who have been arrested in recent years are juveniles, their punishments are often lax and some have gone on to commit new crimes.
“These three things might seem disparate, but they were all happening at the same time,” Mr. Piquero said. “That created a perfect storm.”
In Milwaukee, which will host the Republican National Convention this week, reported carjackings have increased 29 percent since 2019. Milwaukee’s police chief, Jeffrey Norman, recently urged residents and the tens of thousands of people who will be attending the convention starting Monday to be on alert.
“Carjackings are a crime of opportunity,” he told reporters last week. Chief Norman advised drivers to avoid being distracted by their phones and to be aware of their surroundings.
Colleagues and friends of Ms. Stakely, who also worked as a speech language therapist at an elementary school, described her as a gifted educator and a devoted mother.
“She was smart and compassionate, and she cared so much about helping children develop their ability to communicate,” Ms. Stakely’s employer, the Canal Winchester school district, said in a statement. “She was a great mom who was incredibly dedicated to her son.”
Alex Scantland, 28, a close friend of Ms. Stakely, described her as a hard worker who waited tables and took care of pets to supplement her school income.
Ms. Scantland said Ms. Stakely loved good coffee, had a passion for Victorian Era movies and dreamed of one day opening a dog shelter.
“She was trying to give her son the very best life she could,” Ms. Scantland said in an interview.
Relatives have been looking after Ms. Stakely’s son since the carjacking, said Ms. Scantland, who has been raising money online to support the family.
Detectives in Columbus searched Ms. Stakely’s vehicle hoping to find fingerprints or DNA samples that could lead to the assailants, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Sgt. James Fuqua, a police spokesman, told reporters that investigators do not believe the assailants intended to kill Ms. Stakely. He urged them to turn themselves in.
Efforts to reach Columbus police officials on Saturday for an update on the investigation were unsuccessful.
Sergeant Fuqua called Ms. Stakely’s death crushing.
“I’m a parent myself,” he said. “Any parent in that same situation would have done the same exact thing.”
The post Ohio Mother Killed Trying to Stop a Carjacking With Her Son Inside appeared first on New York Times.
