HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A suspect in a failed car theft was tackled by a police officer after he tried to run away, not long after he was thrown out of the car he tried to steal.
Local 10 News was there for the entire ordeal.
Surveillance video from an Exxon gas station on Hallandale Beach Boulevard shows a white car being stolen. The car backs up, but the owner sees it from the store window, runs out and gets inside the car with the thief.
"I ran up to it, I unlocked the passenger side and just got in it with him, and I said, 'Yo, you gotta pull over,'" Sal Paschell told Local 10 News reporter Saira Anwer.
Paschell was visiting from Philadelphia and clearly wasn't about to lose the deposit on his rental car.
"I asked him to pull over and he wasn't, so I grabbed him by the throat and threw him onto traffic," Paschell said.
Paschell regained control of the car and the thief ran back to the Exxon station, where police and Anwer were at another crime scene nearby.
Police said the man, later identified as Gustavo Flores, 27, was detained and was sitting near the gas pumps when he got up and started to run away, but he didn't get very far. One of the officers chased after Flores and tackled him to the ground, police said. Flores was then handcuffed and taken into custody, police said.
Flores, who was hurt in the scuffle with the car owner, was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood.
He faces charges of carjacking, battery and resisting arrest.
Flores appeared in court on Saturday and was denied bond. He is currently being held at the main Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale.