A woman who was almost the victim of a carjacking last week in Allen Park met the truck driver who jumped in and helped her fight off the thief.
“You went and did something for me that nobody else did that day,” said Haley Lorenzen.
Lorenzen and Quentin Grubb met for the first time today since the incident last Thursday, and are speaking exclusively with WXYZ.
“I would hope that if my wife was in the situation she was in, somebody would try to help her,” said Grubb.
Lorenzen was pumping gas Thursday afternoon when a man casually walked up to her car and started driving away. The ensuing struggle was caught on surveillance camera.
“I grabbed his face and I tried to do anything I could -- like gouge his eyes out, I scratched his face, I smashed his head against the window and I just fought. That’s all I did,” said Lorenzen, who jumped in the moving vehicle.
She said her body went into flight or fight mode and wasn’t going to let the thief get away with the car she worked so hard to buy.
Lorenzon said the car was running but it was locked and the keyless fob was in her pocket. She believes the doors unlocked when the suspect pulled the handle.
Lorenzen was inside her Chevy trying to fight the car thief, as he swung around and started heading toward the fuel tanker parked in the lot -- that’s when Grubb sprung into action.
“He gave me the direction that I needed and I guess the clarity,” said Lorenzen, who managed to throw the car in park.
Grubb grabbed the thief and wrestled with him, but the thief slipped away.
“I wish I would have body-hugged him and took him down rather than trying to grab him by the head,” said Grubb, as he described how the thief wiggled out of his arms and ran away.
On Friday, police arrested Earl Joseph Larche for the crime. He faces carjacking charges.
Lorenzen said if she could give the thief a message, she would say: “You’re going to have fun in jail.”
Grubb calls Lorenzen the true hero for having the courage to stand up to the thief.
“I mean why let somebody take what you worked so hard for,” he said.
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