METAIRIE, La. — An attempted carjacking on a quiet residential street in Metairie Friday evening left a single mother and her family shaken, but feeling lucky that they were able to return home after the frightening attack.
Captured by a security camera from a nearby house overlooking Dreyfous Street, video footage obtained by WWL-TV shows a man approaching a car and yelling, “Please help me, my mom just died. Please help me.”
Julie Pursell was driving after just picking up her daughter, 23-year-old Megan Stewart, from her job as a home health caregiver. Stewart’s 2-year-old daughter, Phoenix, was strapped into a car seat in the back.
In an episode that unfolded in seconds, Pursell found herself fighting off the attacker as he wedged himself into the car and on top of her. Pursell said she was fighting him off as he floored the gas pedal, slamming into a passing car on West Esplanade Avenue.
Pursell was left scraped and bruised after tussling with the would-be carjacker and falling into the street.
“We started tumbling onto West Esplanade and into oncoming traffic,” Pursell said.
“I thought my mom had died from what I had seen,” Stewart said. “And I saw my daughter, she was just screaming.”
Stewart’s Honda Accord ended up totaled after it slammed into the other car.
“At that time I didn't care what happened to me, I just wanted my daughter safe,” Stewart said.
The family is grateful today after surviving the sudden and harrowing episode. Stewart said that while her first fleeting instinct was to try to help a man in trouble, she quickly realized her family was in danger and an even more powerful instinct kicked in: to protect her family.
“He just gets in on top of my mom and I started hitting him immediately, saying ‘Please stop, please stop. My daughter's in this car,” Stewart said.
“He actually got the door open, got on top of me trying to pull me out of the vehicle, I mean physically pull me out,” Pursell said. “And I'm fighting him off.”
According to the family and witnesses, the suspect fled by jumping into the drainage canal that divides West Esplanade Ave., swimming across, and then hiding out inside a vacant house.
A spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said that within an hour, deputies arrested Donovan Melancon, 28, of Kenner. Melancon was booked with attempted carjacking and simple burglary. His bail was set at $75,000 on Friday and he remains locked up at the Jefferson Parish Jail.
In the end, this single mom and her family were grateful just to make it home.
“We're all alive, so that's the main outcome,” Stewart said.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.