Court records: Father stops carjacking attempt, chases suspect with baseball bat

A carjacking attempt was disrupted Sunday morning when the victim pulled the suspect from the driver’s seat of the moving vehicle and proceeded to chase him through backyards in Spokane’s Emerson/Garfield neighborhood.

Court documents say Eric Williams had parked the car in the 100 block of West Nora Avenue and was tending to his toddler daughter in the back seat when two men approached. One was riding a bicycle and the other was “acting bizarre” and talking quickly, according to court documents.

While Williams tried to ignore him, the second man, later identified as 30-year-old Jeremy Leroy Paul Stearns, climbed into the driver’s seat, according to court documents. Williams told police he reached through the window, wrapped an arm around Stearns’ neck and held on as the car rolled nearly a block with the girl still in the back seat.

Williams then pulled Stearns out of the car, according to court documents. Williams’ girlfriend, who is the girl’s mother and the car’s owner, was nearby and witnessed the scuffle, court documents say.

At one point, a neighbor who noticed the commotion handed Williams a wooden baseball bat as he pursued Stearns, who armed himself with a tree branch, according to court documents. After hitting him once with the bat, Williams lost sight of Stearns and later found him sitting at a bus stop on Ruby Street, court documents say.

There, Stearns ran toward Williams, who responded by hitting him with the bat again in the chest and forearms, according to court documents. Another brief pursuit followed, and a police officer arrested Stearns near Division Street and Baldwin Avenue, where Williams had pinned him to the ground, court documents say.

Stearns faces charges of second-degree robbery, unlawful imprisonment and theft of a motor vehicle. Court documents say no one was injured in the altercations and that Stearns apologized for taking the car.