PERRYVILLE — A 37-year-old Perryville woman was hurt in an apparent car-jacking on I-55 in Perry County Wednesday afternoon.
In a news release issued Thursday morning, Sheriff Gary Schaaf says the woman was northbound on I-55 at approximately 4:26 p.m. in her Toyota RAV 4 when she spotted a vehicle which had been in an accident. She said she observed what she thought were two men standing near the vehicle along with a child who appeared to be around two years old.
The woman stopped to render assistance and was placing the child in the back seat of her car to get her out of the inclement weather. While she was doing that the two persons jumped in the front seat and drove away with the woman still partially in the vehicle, causing her to sustain a broken leg. She was taken by ambulance to Perry County Memorial Hospital.
The two perpetrators were initially described as black males in their early to mid 20s. But, now it has been learned the victim was mistaken and one of the persons she thought was a male, was actually a female.
The female has been identified as 22-year-old Victoria Smith of Memphis, Tennessee.
Sheriff Schaaf said Smith and another woman stole a 2013 Nissan Sentra in Memphis. After dropping the other woman off, Smith and her brother headed to St. Louis with the brother’s young daughter. That’s when the Nissan ran off the road and struck a rock bluff at the 132 mile marker.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol was notified of the stolen RAV 4 and it was seen in Ste. Genevieve County. The trooper pursued it north on I-55 until losing it in falling snow after reaching I-270.
Sheriff Schaaf said Smith dropped of her brother and his daughter in St. Louis and was headed back to Memphis when the stolen RAV 4 was spotted and pursued by police in Mississippi County, Arkansas. The pursuit ended when Smith crashed the RAV 4 into a semi.
Smith was taken into custody in Arkansas on charges of felony vehicle hijacking, felony assault, felony endangering the welfare of a child and felony receiving stolen property. She is currently being held without bond awaiting extradition to Perry County.
There had been a report in an earlier version of this story that the woman used an app on her phone to disable the Toyota, but that was not mentioned in the report from the Perry County Sheriff’s Office and could not be confirmed by the Ste. Genevieve County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Schaaf says that part of the story came from the woman, who believed that once her car was too far from the key fob she had with her, it would stop running. That proved not to be the case.
There was also a report that the victim’s car was recovered in Ste. Genevieve County, but that also turned out to be untrue.