DEER PARK, Texas (KTRK) — A Good Samaritan says he learned a scary lesson about the cost of helping strangers after he was carjacked by a woman he was trying to help.
James Sparkman said he was driving back from a doctor’s appointment Tuesday afternoon when he saw a weeping woman walking down Glenwood Avenue in Deer Park.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ She said, ‘My boyfriend just beat me up,’ and she looked like she’d been really torn up pretty bad,” Sparkman said.
Sparkman said he agreed to give her a ride home, but said those plans changed almost immediately.
“We got down the road, she says, ‘Over there’s a park. They got a port a can. I really need to go to the bathroom,'” Sparkman said.
He said he let the woman out at the Burgess Recreation Center.
After she returned from the bathroom and was shifting some bags to Sparkman’s backseat, he said a heavily tattooed man appeared.
After distracting him with some questions, he said the man moved to the open back passenger’s door and pulled a gun.
“He had a gun pointed right in my face and said, ‘Get out.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘You know. You know the plan. Get out,'” Sparkman said.
Sparkman said the woman shoved him out of the car and took the wheel, then said she and the man drove off.
“I thought he was gonna kill me right there,” Sparkman said.
Wavy Cruz, 28, and Casey Davis, 35, were both arrested in Sparkman’s SUV 31 miles away in Sharpstown hours later, according to court documents.
Records show both are ex-convicts with extensive criminal histories.
“I thought I was really helping somebody,” Sparkman said.
He said he was able to retrieve his SUV Thursday morning from the impound lot but first had to pay a $336 fee.
“There should be a way that the people who are victimized shouldn’t have to pay for their mistake that wasn’t their fault,” Sparkman said.
It’s a crime that’s cost him money as well as his willingness to help a stranger in need.
“Right now, if anybody needs my help, the answer’s ‘I can’t do it.’ No matter what it is, a child or whatever, because you don’t know these days,” he said.
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