Woman injured while trying to get her stolen car back

KANNAPOLIS — Seventy-eight-year-old Rachel Williams Cook didn’t hesitate a moment when she saw the Oldsmobile she’d reported stolen parked at a Centergrove Road convenience store Wednesday.

Pull over, she told a friend giving her a ride. And then she confronted the man driving her stolen car.

A few minutes later, the elderly woman lay on the asphalt parking lot, run over by her own car and seriously injured. She remained in critical condition at NorthEast Medical Center today.

Cook, of 997 Alabama St., underwent hours of surgery at NorthEast for injuries to her body and head, police said.

Police seek Carlton Eugene Smith, 25. He is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury, a felony.

Smith is described as a black man, 5-foot-5, about 140 pounds. Witnesses said the man was wearing a white bandanna on his head and a dark shirt. Police don’t have a current address for Smith.

The incident began shortly past 3 p.m., police said. Cook, riding on Centergrove near Little Texas Road with friends, spotted what looked like the 1992 Oldsmobile she had reported stolen Aug. 22 in Concord. It was parked at Howard’s BP station, 1816 Centergrove Road.

“She told her friends to stop when she saw the car,” Kannapolis Police Sgt. Steve Belk said. Cook’s friends told police she approached a man near the Oldsmobile and said ‘I think this is my car.”

Cook and man exchanged words and the man jumped in behind the steering wheel of the car. But Cook stood blocking the driver’s side door open, witnesses told police.

The man then dropped the car into reverse and backed up, knocking Cook to the ground, her friends said.

As the man continued to back up, the left front tire ran over a prostrate Cook, running from her pelvic area all the way up her torso and over her head, the witnesses said.

Paramedics rushed Cook to the hospital, and police began looking for the man who had run over her.

The man apparently drove the car to the Royal Oaks Gardens apartments on Concord Lake Road and abandoned it there. When police found the car, they confirmed it was Cook’s stolen Oldsmobile.

But the man had gotten away in another car. Witnesses told police it was a white car, but didn’t know its make. Belk said witnesses told police the man left the apartments with someone else.

Belk said Smith’s criminal record in Cabarrus County contains mostly minor criminal infractions.

Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com .