Police in Ohio are looking for two male suspects in connection with the death of a 29-year-old woman who was thrown from her vehicle as she tried to stop it from being stolen with her sleeping 6-year-old son inside.
Columbus police said they were called to an apartment complex around 1:30 a.m. on a report of a pedestrian that had been struck by a vehicle when they found Alexa Stakely lying in the roadway. She had sustained traumatic injuries and was pronounced dead at a hospital a few hours later.
Stakely, a single mother who worked two jobs, had just finished her shift as a waitress and was picking her son up from his babysitter’s home, police said.
She carried her sleeping son to her Honda SUV that was parked outside the babysitter’s home and left it running while she met the babysitter in the doorway to get one of the boy’s belongings.
“As she returned to her SUV, it began to back out into the roadway,” police said in a news release.
Stakely ran toward her vehicle and was struck and thrown to the pavement. The SUV was driven through the apartment complex before being abandoned a short distance away. Responding officers found it and recovered the sleeping child, unharmed.
Afterward, two males were seen running past Stakely who was lying in the roadway, police said. They jumped a fence, and disappeared into a neighboring apartment complex, according to police.
Earlier that morning, a group of males was captured on surveillance video looking into apartments in the area of Castenea Way, police said. When confronted, they went further into the complex and out of view. Two of the males matched the description of the people seen at the complex where Stakely had picked up her son, police said.
Columbus police did not immediately return a request for comment.
Stakely was a speech-language pathologist known as “Ms. Alexa” to her students at Winchester Trail Elementary School, where she worked in the pre-school program, the Canal Winchester Local Schools District said in a statement. She had been with the district for five years. The district remembered her as “a great mom who was incredibly dedicated to her son.”
“Alexa was passionate about children and speech-language therapy,” the district said. “She was smart and compassionate, and she cared so much about helping children develop their ability to communicate.”
“Ms. Stakely made a difference in the lives of the students and families she worked with and will be missed by so many in our community and beyond,” the district also said.
