- At least her past patients are helping the full-time nurse get a new car.
If you want to get really good at something, you should start practicing your craft at a young age. That said, violent crime probably shouldn’t be on your list of childhood aspirations.
Try telling that to this pint-sized crook, though.
Deon Smith, 40, had a hard time believing what was happening when she got out of her vehicle to deliver a DoorDash order. As she was returning to the car, a young child confronted her.
The 11-year-old brandished a handgun and demanded Smith hand over her car keys.
She initially figured the stunt was some kind of a prank or joke and tried to resolve the situation by talking. However, that plan fell apart as Smith heard a voice from behind her calling for the boy to get in the car.
Another underage criminal had gotten into Smith’s car while her back was turned. The armed boy hopped in and the two sped off.
They didn’t get very far, though. About an hour later, Smith got a call from the police with both good and bad news.
The good news was that the cops had apprehended the juvenile delinquents. The bad news was that they had crashed and totaled Smith’s car.
Losing her vehicle has left Smith unable to do not only her part-time DoorDash delivery job, but it has also made getting to her daytime nursing job difficult. But perhaps the biggest punch in the gut is that she had just paid off the car a couple of months ago.
The Littlest Carjacker
As we mentioned, Smith does have a job outside of DoorDashing. She is a full-time home healthcare nurse in Chesterfield, Virginia.
Two years ago, she started doing DoorDash deliveries on the side to get some extra income. Smith is trying to save money with the aim of buying a house for herself and her 10-year-old daughter.
With that, Smith was delivering a food order on November 30, just after midnight. She arrived at an apartment complex in southern Richmond and successfully dropped off the food.
She had noticed a child and a teenager hanging out in the apartment complex’s yard as she got out of the car. As she walked toward her car, the smaller boy came up to her.
“The little one approached me. I was thinking he was asking for money or something,” Smith told Scripps News.
“Little did I know he was pointing a gun at me asking for my keys.”
‘Where’s Your Mom?’
At first, Smith had a hard time taking the situation seriously. After all, this was a small child who was threatening to pop a bullet in her head.
“When he told me that he was going to shoot me, I was like, ‘Are you serious? You want to kill somebody at your age?’ I was asking, ‘Where is your mom?’ and ‘Why are you out here this time of night?’” Smith recalled.
Smith had left her car running as she had imagined she would only quickly get out to drop off her order. While she tried to talk down the underage gunman, the slightly older kid took the initiative and snuck into the driver’s seat of Smith’s vehicle.
With the vehicle ready to go, he called out to his partner-in-crime to get in. He did, but not without attempting to turn the carjacking into a kidnapping.
“He was telling me to get in the car, but I refused to and so they got in the car and left,” said Smith.
A Total Loss
As the children took off, Smith immediately pulled out her phone and called the cops. They said they’d be in touch with her as soon as they had any news.
Only an hour later, Smith’s phone rang. We can imagine she might have been relieved to hear that the cops had taken the underage carjackers into custody.
That relief probably went out the window pretty quickly as the officer told her the second part of the news. They had been able to arrest the boys because they’d crashed Smith’s car.
It hadn’t been just a small bump, either. According to Smith, her car was a total loss.
“I had just finished paying for my car in September. In two months, it was taken away from me and totaled,” she said.
Richmond Police confirmed later that the children had been arrested following a car accident.
“The suspects fled the scene in the victim’s vehicle which was later located in Henrico County, crashed in a rural area. The two juvenile suspects inside the vehicle at the time of the crash were transported to local hospitals. They were released without any significant injuries and charged with robbery,” a police spokesperson said.
Left without a vehicle, Smith has found herself unable to do her part-time job, not to mention her full-time one. Fortunately, she is getting some help from the patients she has nursed.
The families of Smith’s patients have opened a GoFundMe page to help Smith get to work and provide for her daughter and herself. Here’s hoping Smith can soon drive to both of her jobs in a new car.