A 22-year-old man who allegedly tried to carjack an SUV with a mother and three children inside is going viral in a bad way after he was b...
A 22-year-old man who allegedly tried to carjack an SUV with a mother and three children inside is going viral in a bad way after he was body-slammed by the father and some bystanders.
Oh, and it didn’t hurt that he ended up wearing only his underwear, either.
According to KOVR-TV, police say that Elijah Cervantes was arrested after he was taken down by a crowd of people in Stockton, California, after the attempted carjacking on Dec. 8.
Patricia Ontiveros told the station she was delivering supplies to her husband’s taco truck when the suspect — who wasn’t wearing a shirt at the time — jumped in the back of their SUV.
He then tried to get in the driver’s seat by climbing over her three young children, ages 11, 6 and 5 months. (It may not surprise you to learn that Cervantes was both a parolee and, according to police, intoxicated at the time of the incident.)
“I was in my mom’s car, playing my game, and then, out of nowhere, some guy just hopped into the back,” Isiah, the 11-year-old, told KOVR.
Ontiveros hit Cervantes and began honking the horn, hoping to get her husband’s attention.
Get his attention she did, and he rushed over — along with a phalanx of bystanders.
Cell phone video captured what happened next. After being pulled from the car, now without his jeans, Cervantes was promptly slammed to the ground. A brief attempt at running away doesn’t seem to have amounted to anything. As he’s held down by the men, he seems to be babbling inaudibly throughout.
He was pinned down until officers arrived.
“[The mother] decided to fight the suspect and she also did something very good, she honked the horn,” Stockton police Officer Joe Silva told KTXL-TV.
“And that alerted not only her husband but a couple of good Samaritans that also came over to the vehicle and helped out the husband by holding down the suspect.”
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Cervantes was taken to a local hospital to be checked out — he had gotten a few kicks during the scuffle, after all — and was all good. He was later booked on an attempted carjacking charge.
Police also said he was on probation for a previous robbery, so clearly our friend has some history here.
The family, meanwhile, was unhurt, as were the bystanders who came over to help.
As we so often say in situations like this, things could have ended a lot worse.
There were a few reasons for this: quick thinking (and good fighting) on the mother’s part, the fact that there were good Samaritans willing to come over and help the father subdue the suspect (helpful bystanders are always a blessing) and the fact that the suspect appeared to be easily overpowered. (I’m assuming the intoxication played no small role here.)
Cervantes, meanwhile, has earned his moment of viral infamy. He hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, but the fact that he’s on video being physically removed from a car that wasn’t his — shirt off, pants falling down — doesn’t augur well for his case.
Assuming this is what it looks like, he’s deserved every derisive digital glance he gets.
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