Woman survives violent carjacking in downtown Spokane; suspect pulled over on I-90

On Monday afternoon, Sonora Hetrick was heading home from her job at a coffee shop, waiting for the light to change at an intersection in downtown Spokane, when another woman walked up to her car, pulled open the door and demanded she get out.

A scuffle ensued, as the woman reached inside to unbuckle Hetrick’s seat belt. Hetrick was eventually ripped from the driver’s seat of her Kia Rondo – but her foot was stuck inside the car, she said, wedged under the seat or tangled in the seat belt. She was dragged a short distance before her foot came loose, sustaining only “heavy bruising and some scrapes,” she said.

“It’s kind of hard to believe,” Hetrick said in an interview Monday evening. “It’s crazy.”

The robbery happened just after 12:30 p.m. in the intersection of Stevens Street and Spokane Falls Boulevard. Police initially reported that Hetrick was run over by her own vehicle. She said she was tossed partway underneath the car and may have bumped a rear tire, but it did not roll over her.

After she was dragged, Heflick said, she ran after the car and tried to confront the woman who was still driving away at a low speed. Her wrist got slammed in the door.

One of numerous witnesses followed Hetrick’s car onto Interstate 90 until police caught up. They pulled over the car, which reportedly had been traveling at about 90 mph, on the Highway 2 exit west of Spokane.

The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Tamara N. Hayes, was arrested “without incident,” said Officer Josh Laiva, a spokesman for the police department.

Laiva said the carjacking “appears to be a completely random act,” noting that the two women did not know each other.

“This doesn’t happen very often,” he said.

Hayes is in the Spokane County Jail facing charges of first-degree robbery, first-degree assault, second-degree malicious mischief and theft of a motor vehicle. She doesn’t appear to have a criminal record in Washington.

Hetrick had her wrist examined at a hospital and is relieved she got her car back. It has no obvious signs of damage, she said.