Previously we reported about a couple who escaped an armed carjacker by hiking up a volcano. Well, now they're speaking out and explaining why. According to the California couple, the carjacker hunted them with guns and a drone for nearly a day.
Both Justina and Alex Lucero were visiting Haleakalā National Park when the incident occurred. They went there because locals suggested it was a scenic area to visit. "Everybody was wonderful. All the locals and all the tourists that we ran into were great," Alex told KHON. Upon arriving, they noticed a Road Closed sign had been knocked over. However, locals told them the area was open now.
"We weren't suspicious of anything like that," Justina said. "We were told that the locals there will use the same road, and if they come up behind you, just pull off to the side and let them pass because they're going to be not looking at the same scenery the way that you will." That's why when a truck came up behind them, they pulled over and let it pass. However, slightly up the road, they found the truck blocking the road and a masked man with a gun.
"[He] jumps out and comes right at us with the gun and stops us in the middle of the street," Justina said. Alex said the criminal barked, "Leave all valuables, leave the keys. Empty your pockets, leave everything in the car, and start walking that way now."
Carjacker Hunts Couple
However, after they abandoned their vehicle, the armed carjacker chased them in their car into the nearby brush. "Now he's coming towards us. So we very, very quickly went from a fast walk to a sprint up this gulch," Alex said. The two headed towards the volcano.
"He's yelling for us to show ourselves. 'Yeah, I'll find you! I'll find you!' And at some point he counts down from, I don't know if it was 10 or I heard him at five. And at the end of it, he shot the gun off," Alex said. Justina added, "At that point, we knew it was loaded. We knew he meant business."
However, that's when things became even more like a horror movie. They said that the carjacker was joined by two other cars. A hostile group then began to search the area for the two. They even used a drone with a spotlight to search for the couple.
"This feeling of being hunted and not knowing the extent of, you know, what they would do, what they wanted and who he had at his fingertips to help," Justina said. Alex said, "I had mentally come to the conclusion that we were going to die." They later came across men on horseback, but they avoided them because they didn't know if they were friendly or not.
Police ultimately arrested the carjacker.
