TOMBALL, Texas – One man is in custody and another is on the run after a police chase in northwest Harris County. The men are accused of robbing several women at gunpoint in the Willowbrook Mall area.
Deputies tell Local 2, the robbers were targeting their next potential victim -- Carrie Devine -- when she noticed she was being followed driving home from work.
"I knew I didn't recognize the car," Devine said. "So, I just started paying attention to what (the driver) was doing."
Devine said she first noticed the suspicious vehicle exiting Tomball Parkway at Spring Cypress Road Thursday evening.
She said drove out of her way to a drive-thru restaurant and a gas station just to be sure she was being followed.
"When you're in that situation, you're still thinking positively like, 'Surely they're not following me,'" Devine said. "But I probably went up and down a hundred streets and they were still just steadily following me the whole time."
That's when she called 911.
Devine said the dispatcher told her to drive to a nearby movie theater, where police would meet her.
"She was obviously paying attention to her surroundings and saw these guys and possibly would have been their next victim," said Harris County Constable Pct. 4 Asst. Chief Mark Herman.
On their way to meet Devine, Herman said deputies spotted the suspects' car and tried to pull it over.
After a two-mile chase, the suspects cornered themselves by turning into a cul-de-sac on Hayden Wood Drive
There, deputies were able to arrest the passenger, but they couldn't find the driver, who ran away.
What they did find, were several stolen purses in the suspect's car.
"(The victims) were in the Willowbrook Mall area and they had just been robbed at gunpoint by both of these individuals," Herman said.
Deputies believe the men were also been responsible for several other recent robberies in the area.
"I'm just so thankful that I just didn't come on home and continue to try to ignore that little voice in the back of my head that says something is not right," Devine said about calling police.
Deputies say, right now, they're not releasing the name of either suspect but say the abandoned car was registered to the driver who got away. Felony evading and aggravated robbery charges are pending.