KANSAS CITY, Mo. (March 18, 2016) – Police are looking for the man who carjacked a mother of four children at gunpoint.
The violent attack happened Thursday around 6:15 a.m. on Drury Avenue near 23th Street.
Maria Rosales, 34, described the frightening experience that occurred while she gathered her belongings from her pickup truck parked in front of her house.
“He pulled me and attacked me like this, he said, ‘Don’t move!'” Rosales said in Spanish.
With a gun pointed at Rosales’ head, the man duct taped her hands and mouth.
She says the suspect, who was wearing a red hoodie, then took her keys, got in her truck and took off.
“I didn’t know whether to come to my house to tell my kids and the babysitter because I was scared,” Rosales said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Rosales made it across the street to her neighbor, Iloe Alvarado, who was getting ready to head out for her first day of work.
“She was attempting to kick my door to get my attention,” Alvarado said.
Alvarado called police to report the crime.
“She was in shock, she couldn’t speak well, she couldn’t explain to me what had happened, she couldn’t express her emotions and everything she was going through,” said Alvarado. “She was shaking. It was obvious they had roughed her up.”
Alvarado said she noticed something unusual when she woke up that day: a yellow cab parked in front her house running for almost an hour. It drove away right before the attack.
“Everybody is a community, everybody needs to watch out for each other, everybody needs to help each other, that’s the most important thing,” Alvarado said.
Both Rosales and Alvarado are shaken up by this, and both said there’s a lesson to be learned from the incident.
“People aren’t being aware, and they’re not paying attention, and you could be the next victim,” Alvarado said.
Rosales said detectives have told her police will step up patrols in the area, but for now, she is left without a way to get to work or get her children to and from school.