PAULS VALLEY, Okla. –What started as an act of kindness turned into a carjacking and kidnapping and the victim was held at knife and gunpoint.
The incident happened on Friday, July 15th.
“We had a gentlemen come to a house in a rural part south of Stratford. He goes up to the door and tells the homeowner that he was just robbed,” Sheriff Larry Rhodes, with the Garvin County Sheriff’s Office, said.
He wasn’t just robbed, but kidnapped, punched, and threatened with multiple weapons all in his own car.
“Our victim was very frightened. Did not know the suspect whatsoever and is still frightened,” Sheriff Rhodes said.
Authorities say the suspect, 36-year-old Jerry Kent Ellis, approached the victim at the gas station and asked him for a ride to Ada and he agreed.
“Our victim, what I know about him, he was just trying to help somebody. The ride was supposed to be a short distance but instead he got robbed by knife and at gunpoint and taken several miles away,” Sheriff Rhodes said.
Garvin County deputies first tried to track the vehicle by the victim’s cell phone that Ellis stole, but they still couldn’t find him.
“Early Saturday morning about 4 a.m., we received some information from a person here in Pauls Valley that a person may have a vehicle that didn’t belong to him,” Sheriff Rhodes said.
That information led deputies to I-35 where they found Ellis and arrested.
“Quite frankly the days of trying to help somebody out that you don’t know, those days are over. You know an alternative to that would be to pick up your cell phone if you’re concerned about an individual or someone broken down on the side of the road, pick up your cell phone and call your local authorities. Let us check it out,” Sheriff Rhodes said.
Ellis was booked into the Garvin County Jail and faces multiple charges.