Good Samaritan’s car stolen by crash victim she stopped to help
When Jennifer Jones was driving home on a Honolulu, Hawaii freeway, she witnessed the serious crash of an SUV. “Just take a sharp turn left and sharp turn right into the median,” Jones explained to KHON 2. Instinctively, Ms. Jones pulled over to offer her help as she saw smoke pour out of the crashed vehicle. The Good Samaritan rushed over to the SUV so quickly that she left the keys in her own blue Miata. “There was a woman hanging half out of the passenger side and she looked pretty bad. There was blood all over her,” said Jones.
Trained in First Aid and CPR for 17 years, Ms. Jones pulled the injured woman out of the SUV. When the driver and another passenger emerged from the SUV, the man who is thought to be the driver made a strange comment to Jones asking her if she needed a taxi. She was taken by surprise by the remark and told the man that she was waiting for an ambulance with the injured victim. “He just kind of backed away looking at me, but backed away this way and then all of a sudden my brake lights went on and burned rubber and it screeched off,” she recalled. “It took a minute to register that this man just stole my car.” Jones told KHNL Hawaii News Now, "Who's going to come steal your car while you're rendering first aid? It's just unfathomable that someone would do it."
Reeling from what had just happened, the do-gooder was told by the crash victim that she was hitchhiking and the accident was caused by a struggle when one of the men held a knife to her. The story turned out to be a lie. Once police arrived on the scene 22-year-old Christopher Daniels was arrested for unauthorized entry into a motor vehicle and an outstanding warrant. The woman, who turned out to be the girlfriend of the runaway thief, was treated at a nearby hospital. Jones said, "The police later informed me that indeed that car was stolen and those three people had just taken it off of a dealership lot."
When Ms. Jones realized that her iPhone was in her missing car, she tracked it using the Find My iPhone app. "My friends were all teasing me, It’s like ‘That’s not CSI, Jennifer. This is not Hawaii Five – O. It's not going to geotrack your phone.' I’m like, ‘It will,'" said an adamant Jones. That information was all Honolulu Police needed to find the blue Miata within minutes. The interior of the car was trashed, but most of the owner’s belongings were still inside her car, plus surprisingly, some of the thief’s own clothes. Police are still searching for the man who stole Jones’ car.
Amazingly, the experience hasn’t changed Jennifer Jones’ outlook on helping others. The Good Samaritan said, "Their bad actions aren't going to change my good actions. I would still stop today if I saw a car. You know, it’s, it's the right thing to do. It's Hawaii, we should be watching out for each other.”
