Federal Way man says he rescued woman from carjacking by tackling suspect

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. - A young man with aspirations of being a police officer put some of his previous training to use when he tackled a potential carjacking suspect that was trying to get into a young woman's car.

It happened Monday afternoon at 129 S. Dash Point Road, with some of the ordeal caught on video.  

David "Alex" Lopez says he doesn't consider himself a hero, although he may have stopped someone from getting seriously hurt. 

He says anyone would have done it, and hopes to one day put his skills to use as an officer in the future. 

"I just kind of tackled him," said David "Alex" Lopez, a local resident who stopped a potential carjacking. 

In cell phone video, Lopez can be seen holding down a man who he says tried to carjack a woman, right in front of him.  

"She looked pretty scared when it happened," he said. 

He says the man tried to pass them both at a high rate of speed in a dark blue sedan. Unable to thread the needle between them, he scraped the side of Lopez's car and crashed.

"He crashed right here and kind of did a whole turn right there," said Lopez. 

Lopez suspected that the man was driving a stolen vehicle, and didn't want to stick around. 

"He went up to my window at first," said Lopez. "I think he was going to try to get into my car."

He says the man targeted the woman next.  

"I think he may have scraped her car a little bit and that’s why she pulled over," he said.   

The suspect tried to break into the frightened woman's car through a crack in the window of the vehicle.  

"He put his fingers in and started trying to rip at the glass, and after that he tried ripping the door handle, and it wasn’t opening and so, that’s when I got behind him, and he started bolting," said Lopez. "Then I ran after him and tackled him and held him until police arrived." 

Lopez says he also made threatening motions as if he had a weapon, but he tackled him anyway.   

"He turned around and acted like he had a gun," he said. "I put my knee on his lower back, because he was struggling. He just kept saying two things: ‘I’m on drugs, sorry.'" 

Lopez, who moved to the Federal Way area from Phoenix, credits previous training with the Phoenix Arizona Police Academy for some of his skills. 

"I was holding his arms behind his back with one hand and I took a video because I was like this is kind of crazy," he said. 

He hopes to apply for and become an officer in Seattle or Federal Way in the future, and was modest about his heroic actions Monday. 

"I don’t feel that I did something somebody else wouldn’t have done," said Lopez. 

It's important to note that while Lopez says he has some law enforcement training, he isn't on the force just yet.  

Police say in general, if you encounter a situation like this, you should not try to intervene yourself. Instead, get somewhere safe and call 911. 

Lopez has started an online fundraiser for repairs to his Chevy Volt, which was severely damaged in the crash.