Pevely Police are looking for a man who allegedly used a semi-automatic pistol in a carjacking early Tuesday (June 5) morning outside the Taco Bell, 1621 Hwy. Z.
At 2 a.m., a 50-year-old Fredericktown woman was sitting in a car eating a meal in the Taco Bell parking lot and the man approached her and forced her out of the car at gunpoint, Capt. Larry Miller said.
“He displayed a black semi-automatic pistol and demanded the vehicle, and she gave it to him,” Miller said.
He said the woman then went to the drive-thru and asked the attendant to call 911, he said.
The woman was passing through Pevely on a trip out of state and was driving a rental car – a black 2017 Toyota Camry with an Oklahoma license plate HUZ843, Miller said.
The suspect was described as a white man between the ages of 20 and 25 with a large build, brown hair and a beard, Miller said.
He said the woman’s cell phone and debit card were still in the car when it was stolen, and police used the phone to try to locate the vehicle.
“Officers pinged the phone twice,” he said.
First they determined the car was in Festus and later, it was in East St. Louis, Miller said.
He said officers work with phone service providers to ping phones, and as signals bounce off nearby towers, police can determine the approximate location of the vehicle.
“The car has been entered as stolen,” Miller said.
Police were waiting Tuesday for surveillance footage from the restaurant and planned to check for footage from other businesses in the area, he said.
Miller said if the man is caught, he could face robbery and armed criminal action charges.