Hijacking Of 18-Wheeler Ends Safely

A man who hijacked an 18-wheeler and held the driver hostage for four hours surrendered to police after an officer shot out the tires and fired tear gas into the cab.

Samuel Scott Jones, 32, of Dallas, was booked into the Collin County jail late Sunday on charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault, said sheriff's Lt. John Norton. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.

The driver and her dog ran to safety after the standoff, which followed a 3-hour police chase through three counties. It began about 4:20 p.m. Sunday in Collin County, Texas, north of Dallas, when a man called police to say that his wife had been carjacked.

Norton identified the woman as Christie K. Bundren, 51, of Allen, Texas. She was reunited with family at the sheriff's department late Sunday.

"It just scared me to death," Bundren said as she tearfully hugged family members outside the department.

The incident began at a gas station in Fairview, where police spotted an 18-wheeler with a woman and her husband inside. At gunpoint, the suspect went up to the victim's husband and ordered him out of the vehicle, Brook Richie of CBS Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate KTVT reports.

The husband go out - and called 911.

The chase wound along tollways, through downtown and residential sections of Dallas and onto a highway toward Fort Worth.

During the chase, the suspect conducted an interview with a local Dallas television station in which he said he did not believe the chase would end peacefully and spoke about injustice toward black men in the United States.

Department of Public Safety troopers pulled alongside the truck and a trooper used a rifle to fire at the radiator and tires, forcing the vehicle to a stop on the western edge of Fort Worth.

By firing tear gas into the truck's cab and offering cigarettes, officers coaxed Jones out of the vehicle and arrested him without incident about an hour later.

The man may have been involved in two carjackings prior to the chase, police said.

A man fitting the suspect's description carjacked a Lexus just before 3 p.m., said Carrollton police Sgt. Patrick Murphy. The man reportedly pointed a gun at someone who tried to help the victim.

"Within 10 minutes that Lexus was wrecked just north of our city in Denton County," Murphy said.

The suspect then flipped the car in a roadside ditch in Denton County, said Tom Reedy, a spokesman for the Denton County Sheriff's Office. The suspect also took an Infiniti from a driver who stopped at the scene, police said.

"I pulled over on the side of the road and rolled my window down and asked if he was OK," Dr. Joseph Surdacki told a Dallas-Fort Worth television station. "The next thing I knew, he put a gun to my head and just told me to get out of the car."

The man gassed up at a truck stop near Fairview in Collin County, but could not get the vehicle to start. He then took the tractor-trailer, police said.