By Jerry Quick

My daughter came home from a trip to the Starbucks at Laval Road with a wild story Sunday, Jan. 13.

Clarissa Quick, 17 (captain of the Frazier Mountain High School varsity girls basketball team) and three friends, Tara Fulton, 20, Stephanie Carboyan, 18 (captain of the FMHS cheer leading squad), and another cheerleader, Karah Marquez, 17 were riding together.

As they were about to turn right at the intersection near Laval Road, just south of McDonald’s, they noticed an SUV stopped in the middle of the intersection. A woman was struggling with a teenage male assailant over her purse. The assailant punched the victim and began running east toward the Interstate 5 with her purse.

Clarissa and Stephanie jumped from the car and started chasing the assailant. Meanwhile, David Rose, 15 and his brother Nathan (who had seen the same event from inside the In-N-Out Burger), also joined the chase with another bystander.

They chased the assailant into a gas station construction site. As he jumped over a fence he threw down the purse, then jumped onto a construction trailer. Trapped by his pursuers, he jumped from the trailer and attempted to run away.

After a short pursuit, the bystander tackled the assailant and held him down until California Highway Patrol officers arrived, according to David Rose.

Clarissa and Stephanie recall the CHP officers said they were ‘hardcore’ and that their involvement could have been dangerous. The victim, a 36 year old woman from Santa Barbara, told the girls that they were ‘heroes.’

She said the 15 year old assailant had tried to carjack her vehicle, but she applied the emergency brake and fought him off. "If you’re not going to give me your car, I’m going to take your purse," she said the assailant told her.

"I was just flabbergasted that it happened," Clarissa said in an interview later. "We jumped out of our car while it was still moving. We wanted to help." David Rose agrees: "I was glad that I could help. I didn’t want to be one of those people who would just look the other way."

The assailant was taken for booking by law enforcement officers.

–Additional reporting by the staff of The Mountain Enterprise

This is part of the January 18, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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