Polk carjacking suspect caught on camera

AUBURNDALE (FOX 13) - To make watering her flowers easier, Deborah Cronin just bought a watering wand. But as she was leaving Lowe’s with it, a guy came out of nowhere and demanded her car keys.

“I thought at first it was kind of a joke,” she recalled.  “But when I heard him a second time, I could tell, hey, this guy is not playing. He means business.” 

The guy grabbed her keys and took off with her blue Chevy Trailblazer

“I was scared,” Cronin continued.  “I was screaming in the parking lot. I was crying. And now I am angry.”

She is grateful about one thing.  Call it fate or luck or whatever, but the morning of the crime, a local businessman was sitting in his car in the parking lot doing paperwork.  He just happened to notice a suspicious-looking guy who, so he snapped a photo.

Minutes later, Cronin was carjacked. Police say it was the same guy.

“Just taking a moment to snap a picture, it’s huge,” offered Auburndale police’s deputy chief, Andy Ray.  “It really gives us a whole lot to go on.”

The thief left more evidence -- the GMC Sonoma he was driving.  It has a burned-out clutch and investigators suspect that when his truck died, he began looking for a new set of wheels.