A Mississippi family is on edge, fearing retaliation could come to their doorstep after security camera images of the gunmen who ambushed and carjacked them on their front lawn received widespread attention.
“We have to get out of here. It’s not safe. Especially not now, with all the news and stuff because their picture, it’s getting out here, and, I’m afraid they’re going to retaliate,” Heather Allen, one of the victims in the incident last week, told “Fox & Friends First” on Thursday.
Allen is a resident of Jackson, Mississippi, where she says crime is out of control, and worse than in crime-ridden Memphis, Tennessee.
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In this still image taken from security footage, carjackers are seen outside Heather Allen’s Mississippi home. (Courtesy of Heather Allen)
That crime epidemic arrived at her front lawn when the offenders walked onto her property and started shouting for her family to get out of their car.
“You can see me throw my hands up,” Allen said. One of the attackers pulled her daughter out of the car, jumped inside and put a gun to her oldest son’s face.
“My son gets out… I told him to run, go into the house, and then that’s when I go for the grandbabies in the back seat,” she recalled.
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Jackson, Mississippi resident Heather Allen plans to relocate after the dangerous carjacking incident left her family feeling unsafe. (Fox & Friends First/Screengrab)
“They’re [the carjackers were] in between my daughter, and they’re going back and forth like, ‘give me the keys, give me the keys.’ My daughter’s like, ‘They’re in the car,’ and then that’s when it dawned on me, I had my keys around my neck, so I took them off and threw them to them to get them out of my yard.”
The family’s security camera caught the crime on video. According to a local report, the incident took place just 40 minutes after another carjacking on a nearby street.
Heather Allen says crime has gotten out of control in the Jackson, Mississippi area.
That same report said local police are still searching for the suspects. Allen claimed one suspect was caught on video at a nearby store. She has been given no information about the other suspect.
Allen also said she got her car back after going “back and forth” multiple times between impounded car lots and the local crime lab.
Taylor Penley is an associate editor with Fox News.