Pregnant Woman and Child Carjacked Near Downtown Ottawa

A close-up of an Ottawa Police officer’s badge in Ottawa on April 28, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Roxanne Brisson was stopped by a stranger who appeared to be stuck on Riverside Drive near downtown Ottawa on Dec. 18. Her dash-cam captured what happened next.

A white SUV was parked in the middle of the road, and as Brisson drove past, the man walked up to her vehicle. He appeared distressed. “Put me in your backseat. This guy’s trying to kill me,” the man told Brisson, as seen on dash-cam footage obtained by CTV News.

Brisson saw the man was trying to get into her vehicle from the passenger seat and kept her doors locked, she told CTV News. “I realized he was mentally unstable and needed some medical attention,” she said.

While Brisson called 9-1-1, the man stopped another car. The driver of that car, a pregnant woman with her 8-year-old boy, left her doors unlocked.

The dash-cam video shows the man entering the orange SUV from the passenger side. The mother is heard screaming.

“I see the man was physically assaulting the driver, the female driver of the SUV and he’s pushing her out. She gets out, he closes the door, he’s trying to start the car,” Brisson said.

The mother and her son took shelter in Brisson’s vehicle, CTV reported. The man is seen in the video driving off in the orange SUV. The woman suffered minor injuries from the assault and was taken to hospital, according to CTV. Her son was not harmed.

The man was arrested Brockville, Ontario, in the early morning of Dec. 19, Staff Sgt. Darryl Boyd of the Brockville Police Service told The Epoch Times. The police seized an orange Toyota C-HR from the man.