HOUSTON – Jan. 8, 2018, is a night Tereca Cruzado will never forget.
She was carjacked.
Cruzado said she and her 1-year-old son had just settled into her 2016 Gray Ford Explorer about 8:30 p.m. when, she said, a teenager came up to her car.
Cruzado said he appeared to be about 13 or 14 years old.
“He asked me in a very distressed voice, ‘Excuse me ma'am, may I use the phone?'” Cruzado remembers. “’I need to call my mom.’”
Suddenly, she was surrounded by four boys, and one had a gun.
“When he pointed the gun in, that's when they were, like, pulling on the door,” Cruzado said.
They wanted her 2016 Gray Ford Explorer.
At that point, all Cruzado wanted was her son.
“They said leave your phone, leave your keys,” Cruzado said. “They told me to get out. I was like, 'OK, I'm getting my son.' I got my son. They did wait for me to get my son.”
A terrifying experience was compounded by the fact that she had just gotten the car three months ago.
“So, I just lost the car to Harvey and now I lost the car to someone robbing and carjacking me,” she said.
While Cruzado lost a lot, she knows she walked away with what mattered most.
“We are blessed to be here,” Cruzado said. “We are blessed not to be harmed.”
Her vehicle was found early Friday morning at an apartment complex about two miles away from Cruzado's apartment.