A woman was beaten as she tried to stop a thief from stealing her car with her 4-year-old niece inside.
It happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday outside a laundromat on Highway 62 South at FM 105. The woman had left the child in the running car while she went inside to check on her laundry.
The 28-year-old woman was also dragged as the thief put the car in reverse and hit two other vehicles in the parking lot.
Orange police report 23-year-old Dillon Edward Champagne of Groves has been charged with second degree strong-arm robbery. He faces two to 20 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 fine.
The woman told police she went to the laundromat about 10:40 a.m. and started washing her clothes. She then waited inside her parked car outside the business. Her niece was in the back in a rear-facing child seat.
The woman told police she went to check her laundry. She saw a man get out of the passenger side of a car that drove up. He walked to her car and looked inside. Then he walked inside to the adjacent convenience store. When he came out of the store, he went to her Ford Focus and got in the driver’s seat.
The woman ran out and tried to get him out of the driver’s seat. He threw the car into reverse with the woman hanging half outside. Police said he hit a Ford SUV parked next to the Focus and then hit the front of a parked Mazda M6G behind the Focus.
The man stopped the Focus and the woman kept trying to get him out. Police said the man elbowed the woman and punched her in the face a number of times. He then got out of the car and continued to hit the woman.
Next he got inside the car that had brought him and the driver left. Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies, who were called to the scene, stopped the car at a business near by. Orange police are investigating the robbery because it was inside the city’s limits.
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