Police seek carjacker posing as home buyer

Police seek carjacker posing as home buyer

HOWLAND — Police continue their search for a man, posing as a prospective home buyer, who carjacked a real estate agent’s sport-utility vehicle while he was being driven around to look for houses to buy.

The agent for Century 21 in Howland told police a man called her Monday, and she made arrangements to meet him at Perkins Restaurant on Elm Road.

He left his car in the parking lot while she briefly drove him around. She told police he wanted to stop at the Seven Seventeen Credit Union on Larchmont Avenue.

Once she pulled her SUV into the drive-through area, the man pulled a pistol. She argued with him not to commit the crime.

He responded that he was desperate, had lost his job, nobody would hire him, and he had lost his home.

The agent got out of her SUV, yelling that her passenger had a gun and was going to hold up the credit union. An employee took her inside. When she looked back, the gunman had gotten into the SUV’s driver side and fled.

When police checked the parking lot at Perkins, they found the agent’s 2007 GMC Acadia, but the suspect’s Jeep Grand Cherokee with Pennsylvania plates was gone.