‘I started screaming’: Knife-wielding man tried to steal woman’s car at SouthPark Mall

CHARLOTTE — A woman said she was with her 7-year-old daughter when a knife-wielding man tried to steal her car from the parking garage Monday afternoon at SouthPark Mall.

“We were leaving SouthPark Mall,” said the mother, who did not want to be identified. “I was putting my daughter in the back.”

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“He said, ‘Give me your keys,’ then showed me a knife,” the woman said. “As I was handing him the keys, my daughter was in the back seat. I said, ‘Please just let me get my daughter out,’ and he said, ‘Get in the car.’ Then I started screaming, ‘Help, help, help,’ really loud.”

Her screams may have thrown him off because he gave the keys back. She grabbed them, jumped in the car, locked the doors and called 911.

She told police the man was thin and possibly in his 40s.

“He was very stern,” the woman told Channel 9. “His tone was, I don’t know, very scary.”

The woman and her daughter were not injured.

“Just be aware who’s around you, or just be aware,” she warned others. “And yell, even if they tell you not to. I mean, I think that’s why he left.”

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