A 19-year-old man is facing a dozen criminal charges after police say he tried to strangle his mother in a Publix parking lot, stole her SUV, and led officers on a high-speed chase that ended in a crash in a neighboring county.
The incident began October 22 in Cartersville, Georgia, about 45 miles north of Atlanta, when Elijah Jase Parker allegedly attacked his mother, Laura Ann Moore, while the two sat together in her 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe outside a Publix grocery store, according to news radio station WBHF.
Cartersville Police Captain Greg Sparacio told Fox 5 Atlanta that the attack came without warning.
“Out of the blue, he just started choking her,” Sparacio said. “She felt she was going to lose consciousness.”
Moore managed to break free and ran to safety inside a nearby Five Guys restaurant, police said. She later told investigators she believed her son would have killed her had she not escaped.
Parker did not have a driver’s license, according to reports, but took off in his mother’s Tahoe anyway. Police say he later admitted his intentions.
“He was questioned as to why he ran, he did say that his intent was to kill his mother, and he failed because she had escaped the vehicle,” Sparacio said.
WBHF reported that Parker told police he had placed a plastic bag over his mother’s head in an attempt to kill her, and that he fled a subsequent traffic stop because he knew he was driving without a license.
Officers issued an alert for the stolen SUV, and about two hours later police in Adairsville spotted the vehicle and attempted to stop it, triggering a pursuit that reached speeds of nearly 100 mph.
The chase crossed into Gordon County, where authorities say Parker lost control while making a high-speed turn and crashed into a Kia Optima stopped at a stop sign. The driver of the Kia required medical attention but was not seriously injured. Officers pulled Parker from the wreckage and took him into custody.
Parker is now held at the Bartow County jail facing 12 charges, including aggravated assault by strangulation, felonious theft, driving without a license, fleeing a police officer, and false imprisonment.
Records show Parker had been arrested weeks earlier, in September, on a misdemeanor charge of making terroristic threats, but was released days later on his own recognizance, according to the New York Post.
That earlier arrest may shed light on what prompted the attack. The Post reported that Moore said her son had told her he wasn’t about to go to prison, and that if police tried to stop him, he would “shoot it out” with them.
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