‘He’s a psycho and he needs to get out’: 12-year-old fights carjacker to save sister

When Brandie Weiler started driving her two daughters to the Busch Gardens theme park near their Virginia home Saturday night, she expected a quiet ride.

But instead, the two girls ended up having to fight off a carjacker who tried to drive off with them both before he was stopped and arrested by police.

On their way to the park, Weiler pulled over when she witnessed two cars crash near the corner of John Taylor Highway and Greensprings Road in Williamsburg, she later told WTKR. Weiler, intending to help, pulled over and got out of her vehicle to call 911. But while on the phone, she saw the driver of one of the cars, a crashed Acura, walk toward her own.

“I could see him going towards the van, and I’m screaming,” Weiler told the station.

Police would later identify the man as 21-year-old Paul Salsman, who told officers he was high on crack cocaine and LSD when crashed his car into a Honda Accord that evening, the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily reported. Salsman had already tried to take two other vehicles that had stopped nearby because of the crash before he walked over to Weiler’s car with her daughters inside, police said.

Inside the van, both 12-year-old Maddie and 7-year-old Mollie watched as Salsman reached into the car and let himself into the driver’s seat.

“’Let’s go,’” Maddie recalled Salsman saying to them, she told WTKR.

But Maddie, whose family members included police officers and firefighters who had prepared her for dangerous situations, had no intention of cooperating. She started “punching him and screaming as loud as I could,” she recalled to the television station, as her sister clambered out of the car. Maddie also reached over and put the transmission in drive to activate a safety feature that would stop the engine from starting.

“I just went for it,” Maddie told the television station. “Nothing passed my mind except, ‘He is a psycho and he needs to get out of the car.’”

When police arrived, Salsman tried to flee into the woods around the intersection, the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily reported. Officers tased Salsman after he did not respond to orders to stop and charged him for the felony hit and run, three counts of carjacking and driving under the influence.

Maddie’s right wrist was later treated for a fractured growth plate, but she and her sister sustained no other injuries.

Her father Steven told WTKR that the attempted carjacking “could have been an Amber Alert had it not been for her thinking.”

“I thought he was going to take us,” younger sister Mollie also told the station. “It was amazing because she has never done that.”

According to the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, Salsman is scheduled to appear in district court next month.

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 6:41 AM with the headline "‘He’s a psycho and he needs to get out’: 12-year-old fights carjacker to save sister."