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PLYMOUTH — Mike Sharma, owner of Quick & EZ Stop, Plymouth called Rob Ragukus “the best man” on Monday night after he held an alleged would-be carjacker at gunpoint until the police came.
“He saved all of us,” he said.
Sharma said that as he was waiting on Katherine DeLuca, a black male came inside the store, “huffing and puffing,” and he asked him if he was okay.
When DeLuca left the store and got in her car, a gold Chevy Malibu, the male followed her, attempted to get into the vehicle and told her to get out, she said.
DeLuca would have none of it.
“I wasn’t getting out of the car,” she said. “No way.”
She said that when she refused, the suspect start yelling, “She’s trying to kill me,” and then ran across U.S. Route 11.
At that point, it was reported by bystanders that the suspect stopped a white Saturn attempting to drag the driver out of the car, which had two children in the back of it.
“She was yelling, ‘My kids are in the car, my kids are in the car,’” said DeLuca, who witnessed what was happening as she was attempting to get herself together.
Sharma said the suspect then dragged the woman to the ground, but that she got back in the car, wrestling for control.
What happened next was both terrifying and heroic.
The vehicle lurched across Route 11, coming to the stop at the base of a gas pump at the Quick and EZ, DeLuca said.
Sharma said Ragukus, who had pulled in to purchase cigarettes, got out of the car, pulled a gun and said, “I have a license to carry this gun, don’t move.”
Sharma and several others had already called 911 and the police arrived shortly afterward.
The woman emerged from the car safely and the suspect was taken into custody, Plymouth police said at the scene.
The name of the suspect was not immediately available.
Ragukus said his thoughts were with his son, who is at Parris Island, South Carolina, having recently entered the military, but that he “had to do what he had to do.”
“Its something everyone needs to do,” he said, “Stop up and take back their town.”
