LAWRENCE, Ind. — Police in Lawrence arrested a suspect in a carjacking and robbery Tuesday afternoon.
“I just think about all this woulda, coulda, shoulda stuff,” the victim told 13News Tuesday evening.
She didn’t want to give her name or show her face after what she said happened around 4 p.m. Monday when she left a Dollar Tree store on Pendleton Pike, only to have a man in the parking lot force his way into her car.
“Before I could close the door, he stepped in between the door and myself and he showed me his pistol and he was like, 'Scoot over,'" the woman said.
What came next, according to the woman, was an hourlong trip with the wife and mother in the passenger seat, a stranger with a gun sitting next to her behind the wheel of her SUV.
She said she cried and wondered if she was ever going to see her family again.
“I was thinking about, 'What’s it going to feel like when he shoots me? What’s that bullet going to feel like?' she said remembered thinking, adding she’s thankful she never had to find out.
"Even as I was crying, he was like, 'Stop crying, I’m not going to hurt you, like stop crying,'" she said the man told her. "At one point, he even gave me a tissue to wipe my nose. He kept telling me, 'You’re a real nice woman.'"
A nice woman whose wedding ring and a second ring she said he took from her. The man told her he had lost his job recently and had kids in college.
"He just kept saying, 'I need money, I need money,'" she remembered.
That’s when she said he drove first to a bank near the Dollar Tree, only to find out the drive-thru was closed. They then went to another bank, this one in Irvington.
"He wanted my debit card code, but I didn’t know it,” she said.
That’s when the woman said she tried to withdraw money in the drive-thru, but the teller told her she couldn’t because her ID was expired.
Even then, the woman said, the suspect wasn’t deterred.
"At one point, he was like, 'You’re going to have to be with me all night,'" she recalled.
"I was like, 'Can we just drive around to the ATM at the bank and I’ll give you every code I know?'" she said she told the man.
So that’s what she did.
"By God’s grace the code, the last code, worked,” she said, explaining the suspect withdrew $500 from her account. She told him that’s all she had in the bank.
"Then he happened to look at the receipt and it showed how much money I had left and he was like, 'You lied to me,'" she said he told her.
In that moment, she said she was terrified he might hurt her.
Instead, she said, the man took her to transit center downtown and gave her $5 to catch the bus, letting her first get her purse, phone and son’s backpack out of her SUV before he took off in it.
Before he left, the woman said she had one question for him.
"I asked him, 'Why (did) you choose me?' and he said it just wasn’t my lucky day and it was simple as that,” she recalled, shaking her head.
Knowing he is behind bars, she had a message for the man she spent an hour with and whose name she didn’t get.
"Robbing me or robbing anybody, that’s not the move, and now look where you at. I guess you don’t really have to worry about food and shelter anymore 'cause you gonna have it and I’m going to court,” she said.
The woman said she’s not looking forward to seeing the man again if the case goes to trial, but she said she knows it’s something she would need to do.
“When people out here hurting people, we can’t keep being quiet and letting them do it,” she said.
“We believe this was a crime of opportunity," said Lawrence Police Chief Gary Woodruff. "Wrong people, wrong place, wrong time coming together for this crime to occur. The victim in this case absolutely did the right thing. They complied. Nothing is worth losing your life over or creating a situation where a serious injury occurs.”
Police said the woman's vehicle was recovered at 30th Street and Capitol Avenue in Indianapolis. A gun was also recovered.
Woodruff said the discovery was the result of working with the Indiana Crime Guns Task Force, which participated in the investigation and was part of the arrest.
Police were able to use a surveillance photo from one of the banks to identify George Landy as a suspect.
Police were able to locate Landy in the same area as the woman's stolen car and officers said they saw Landy going into the vehicle. When officers tried to stop him, they said Landy ran. Police said they saw Landy throw a gun over a fence and, when they caught him, they claim he had the woman's keys in his pocket along with one of the woman's rings.
During questioning, Landy allegedly admitted to being in the car with the victim, but said he showed her an empty holster and not a gun. He claimed he did not make her withdraw any money. Police said Landy also said he found the woman's ring in her car and did not take it from her.
Anyone with information about the crime is encouraged to call 911 or Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-TIPS.