A 9-year-old fooled the carjacker with a pellet gun. Then the kid’s dad led the chase

When Ollie Dunn approached Kevin Cooksey’s truck late Christmas night, he didn’t account for how complicated the alleged auto theft was about to get.

Cooksey’s 9-year-old son was inside the truck, which would be enough to make the average carjacker think twice on its own, but this 9-year-old had what looked like a gun, according to WXIN. When Larry Larimore reached for the look-alike and pointed it at Dunn, it was enough to send the would-be thief scurrying toward a different car in the parking lot.

“As soon as he opened the door, I got scared,” Larimore told WTHR. “So I pulled out the pellet gun and pointed it to his head.”

Dunn then went for Kyle Sparling’s SUV, who had also left his engine running while he ran into the store to buy some chips, according to WTHR. When Cooksey and Sparling ran out of the store, Cooksey told Sparling to get in his truck, and the two called police and tore off after Dunn with Larimore still in the truck as well, according to the Kokomo Tribune.

“I just wanted to go catch the guy,” Cooksey told WTHR. “It’s just one of those instincts to help out somebody else.”

Dunn may have avoided taking a pellet to the face from Larimore, but the road conditions on what was a 20-degree night in the Indianapolis area eventually ended the chase.

Cooksey and Sparling provided police information on Dunn’s location along the chase and watched as Dunn damaged Sparling’s fender and windshield by hitting a sign before he ultimately crashed a couple miles down the road, according to the Tribune.

Dunn, of Lafayette, Ind., was booked on charges of unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle, theft, auto theft and never obtaining a driver license, according to the Howard County Jail log.

This story was originally published December 27, 2017 at 8:28 AM with the headline "A 9-year-old fooled the carjacker with a pellet gun. Then the kid’s dad led the chase."