Top inset: Alexa Stakely (GoFundMe). Bottom inset: Gerald F. Dowling Jr. (Franklin County Sheriff). Background: The location where Stakely was killed (WCMH/YouTube).
Three teens were arrested in the death of an Ohio mother who tried to stop carjackers from taking her SUV with her sleeping 6-year-old son inside as she was picking him up from the babysitter, police said.
Gerald F. Dowling Jr., 19, and two 16-year-old boys face murder charges in the death of Alexa Stakely, 29, the Columbus Division of Police said. Law&Crime is not naming the 16-year-olds because they have not been charged as adults.
Police said in a news release that the first arrest was made on Wednesday, when one of the juveniles came forward with his parents to Columbus Police Headquarters. The boy’s parents had been talking about the tragedy when he confessed to them, local ABC/Fox affiliate WSYX reported.
“We’re thankful for his parents for doing the right thing as hard as that is, I imagine, for them to do,” Sgt. Joe Albert, a spokesperson for Columbus police, told the outlet.
The boy told investigators he stole Stakely’s vehicle and fatally struck her with her car, police said in the news release. He said it happened while he and two others were looking for a car to steal and spotted hers early that morning, police said.
“When Ms. Stakely came to the car, he said it startled him, and he panicked and drove away and struck Mrs. Stakely, which caused her death,” Albert told local CBS affiliate WBNS.
The second arrest came hours later. The second 16-year-old admitted to being present during the theft of Stakely’s vehicle, police said in the news release.
Shortly after the second arrest, Dowling was the third suspect to come forward to Columbus Police Headquarters, where he admitted to his involvement in the incident, police said.
As Law&Crime reported, Stakely was killed on July 11. Officers were called at 1:27 a.m. to the 6300 block of Blue Knoll Drive on a report of a pedestrian struck by a motor vehicle, police said in a news release.
Once there, officers found Stakely lying in the roadway, suffering from traumatic injuries, officials said. She died at a hospital at 8:43 a.m.
Stakely had just gotten off her shift at her second job as a waitress and was picking her son up from the babysitter’s home.
She was about to drive off when she remembered leaving one of his items and returned to get it. She got out of the vehicle to go to the door, leaving her Honda CRV idling, parked just outside the babysitter’s condo. When she returned to her vehicle, she saw it back into the road. She ran toward it but was struck and thrown onto the pavement.
The Honda was driven through the apartment complex and abandoned a short distance away.
Police said in the news release then that two suspects were seen running off, past Stakely lying on the ground, over a fence and into a neighboring apartment complex. Police found the sleeping child inside the CRV, unharmed.
Police said surveillance video caught a group of males looking into apartments earlier that morning, including two who matched the description of the males involved in the incident.
Dowling was in custody in Franklin County, Ohio, on $10 million bond. He has a preliminary hearing set for Aug. 2, online jail and court information shows. The two 16-year-olds are being held in a juvenile detention facility and are expected to appear in juvenile court on Monday. Prosecutors are seeking to try them as adults, local Spectrum News1 reported.
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