Mom Foils Man's Attempt to Steal Her Car in the Bronx: ‘He Got a Whoopin”

A mother taking her child to school jumped into action when she discovered a man was trying to steal her car, dragging him out of the vehicle and pinning him down until police arrived as witnesses cheered her from afar. 

"He's lucky I didn't kill him," Tihisha Jones told News 4 New York. "That's the thing. He's lucky I didn't kill him."

Jones said she started her car with an automatic starter Tuesday morning before she left her apartment to take her son to school. But when she got to the vehicle, which was parked across from 705 Brook Avenue in the Bronx, her son noticed there was a man inside, she said.

So she opened her car door and dragged the man out onto the ground.

"I came to the side to get him out this way, but I couldn't get him out this way -- he pulled the door to close it on me," Jones said. "I jumped across the car, open this door and I pull him out and then after that, I couldn't tell you what happened. I just had to do what I had to do." 

Video captured by a witness shows the woman holding the man on the ground and preventing him from leaving. Officers arrived at the scene around 7:30 a.m. arrested the would-be thief, identified by police as Bernardino Santiago, 19, of the Bronx.

Jones said she was just running on adrenaline and didn't have time to be scared for herself. 

"I was just worrying about Black Beauty, that's all I was worrying about," she said, referring to her car. 

Jones said her car is her lifeline and the only way she can get to her many doctors' appointments. Her car had already been broken into twice before. 

"They just broke this window last week," she said. "Just the last week they broke my window. So I guess he got a whoopin' for the old and the new." 

He has been charged with attempted grand larceny auto, attempted petit larceny and criminal possession of a weapon, the NYPD said.

His attorney information wasn’t immediately available.