Waitress fought off car thief
The Mansfield News-Journal is reporting that when a man tried to steal her 1994 Buick Saturday outside Bob Evans at U.S. 13 and Interstate 71, a 54-year-old Mansfield waitress pulled him from her vehicle and punched him several times.
From the story:
- "I didn't want him to take my car," Mutchler said Sunday from her home. "I don't steal. I work. I don't bother anyone. I didn't want him to take my car. It's not the best car, but it gets me to work."
Mutchler was working her normal waitressing shift at Bob Evans when a co-worker pulled into the parking lot at 8:45 a.m. Saturday. The co-worker saw a man in Mutchler's vehicle. Using a cell phone, he called into the restaurant to warn Mutchler.
"I thought he was joking," she said.
She went to the back door, where she saw a man sitting on her maroon upholstery and using a screwdriver to pry off the steering column in an effort to hot-wire the car.
"I yelled at him from the door," she said. "I yelled twice. I said 'Hey, get out of my car!' The third time, I didn't handle it well. I punched him and pulled him out of my car."
All the while, the man called her names, she said. Although he never threatened her, Mutchler -- who has had surgery on her back -- said he pushed her several times.
Then, the man broke the window of another vehicle, a 1995 Oldsmobile with Pennsylvania plates. As he attempted to hot-wire that vehicle, Mutchler continued to struggle with him, trying to stop him from leaving, she said.
But he managed to get the car started. Mutchler said she tried to pull his hair, but he was wearing a blue cap. She stood holding the cap as the man lurched forward in the Ol[d]smobile, almost striking her.
While escaping, the man hit a pickup just entering the parking lot, Mutchler said. She yelled to the pickup driver to stop the thief. The culprit rammed the car into the door of the pickup and fled onto Interstate 71, where Ohio Highway Patrol troopers began chasing him.
That’s the story before the story Ohioans heard all weekend – that of a screwdriver-wielding criminal who had been shot by a state trooper on the highway, and of another OSHP trooper who had been injured by a stray bullet from her partner’s gun. That’s the story of a woman who refused to be a victim, and who is fortunate her carjacker was not armed with something more than a screwdriver.
Again, from the News-Journal:
- Mansfield police Lt. David Nirode said officers were really impressed with Mutchler.
"How many people would have actually done that?" he said.
Mutchler said friends have called her, asking her to be their bodyguard. She said now that she has had time to reflect, she is a little shaken by the experience.
"I was shaking so bad afterwards, I told my boss somebody had to take me home for my heart pill," she said. Her husband took her home, where she took her pill. Then she returned to work, because it was a busy day and she couldn't take time off.
"What was he thinking?" she said. "What was I thinking? I should have let him have the car, I guess. But I said 'no way.' "
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