Needle as weapon
Photo: Reuters
'Shut up and drive'
Photo: Shutterstock
Woman carjacked under threat of bloody needle
Miri Lehmann was carjacked by man armed with bloody needle while waiting at south Tel Aviv traffic light; upon entering her car, suspect told her 'shut up and drive'
"Suddenly a large man entered the backseat of my car
, slammed the car door shut and said: 'Shut up and drive.'" Miri Lehmann, a Holon resident, was attacked and carjacked by a West Bank
resident who had jumped into her car and threatened her with a needle.
Lehmann eventually managed to escape and the attacker took the wheel. He began driving the car out of the city until an ensuing police chase, which included a police helicopter, successfully halted him in the Yavne area. "I had no idea he had a needle and stone; I just jumped out of the car," Lehmann posted on Facebook.
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The incident took place Thursday at 8 am, while Lehmann was driving to work in south Tel Aviv. When she stopped at a traffic light on Har Zion Boulevard, a man jumped into the backseat of her car.
"The backseat door suddenly opened," she recounted on Sunday to Ynet, "and a big man, holding something in his hand, told me to shut up and continue driving. I began screaming, telling him to get out, but he shut the door and sat down.
"I understood that he wasn’t going anywhere, so instinctively I unfastened my seatbelt and jumped out of the car."
The car then began to roll down the street, hitting the car in front of it. Lehmann ran for her life as her assailant jumped to the driver's seat.
"He began driving in reverse very quickly onto the boulevard itself. He almost ran me over. Afterwards he began driving like a madman in the wrong direction and escaped."
'Shaking and crying'
In a Facebook post she published immediately after the event, Lehmann described the instances following the traumatic experience: "I found myself walking down the street shaking and crying between rows of cars who had witnessed the event."I tried getting into two different cars, but the guys driving them wouldn’t let me in. Eventually, a lovely couple let me into their car and they already had the police on the line. They waited with me until the police arrived and I gave them my statement," she wrote.
According to Lehmann, only at the time she was giving the police her statement did she come to grips with the fact that she had experienced an armed robbery.
Her personal belongings had remained in the car, which was later found, together with the perpetrator, at the end of a joint police chase conducted with the help of a helicopter by the Tel Aviv and Central District police.
According to a police statement, eyewitnesses said the man was holding a needle. After his arrest, the police said that a needle and a very large stone were found in the car. The man's remand has been extended until Tuesday.
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