‘Shocking’: 140 mph chase ends when police stop carjacking in Gaston County

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — A police chase ended when officers stopped the suspects from carjacking a woman in Gaston County Thursday night. Channel 9 spoke to the woman who said it happened while she was headed to the store.

Neighbors told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon they saw the helicopters flying overhead and heard the sirens, but they didn’t know about the police chase.

Two of the three suspects in the chase went to the Captain’s Quarter’s Apartments looking for help. Samantha Hill told Lemon she said no, but she said they wouldn’t accept that as an answer.

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Hill remembers where she was when the strangers approached her car. She said she was headed to the store around the corner and she didn’t know about the police chase that had just ended just off of Highway 321 in Dallas.

Police said the three people in that car reached speeds of 140 mph on Interstate 85. A Channel 9 viewer shared video of the trio running from the car afterward. Lemon showed Hill that video.

“That’s shocking right there, how they just dove out of that car and took off,” she said.

Hill said she didn’t know that Madison Jones and Jaquis Smith, two of people police say ran from that car, were the same people who approached her as she pulled out of her parking space. She had stopped to make sure she had her wallet when the two started yelling at her.

“They started screaming, ‘Oh my God our brother has been in an accident and he’s really severe and we need to get to him,’” she told Lemon.

She said she turned them down but she didn’t realize her car doors were unlocked.

“I’m like, ‘no, no.’ They’re like, ‘please, please.’ And they said, ‘yes, yes, you will.’ And they -- automatically, they’re in the backseat,” Hill described.

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“They just jumped in?” Lemon asked.

“Yeah,” Hill said.

She said she reluctantly started driving but got only a few yards. Police blocked them and she stopped. She said the two suspects in the backseat got angry.

“They were like, ‘go, go, go. Don’t stop, go,’” she said.

But she took the keys out of the ignition. Police made all of them get on the ground, which aggravated Hill’s nagging back injury. She said officers realized she wasn’t involved in the car chase and arrested the people who were.

“We’re all safe now,” she said.

Jaquis Rahmad Smith has charges pending against him for robbery with a dangerous weapon. He is being held without bond.