Mom killed while trying to stop the theft of a car that had her 6-year-old son inside

Columbus, Ohio — An Ohio mother who tried to stop two men from stealing her car with her 6-year-old son inside was killed when she was struck by the vehicle.

According to police, the boy was unharmed and no one else was injured.

Alexa Stakely, 29, of Pickerington, was at an apartment complex in Columbus around 1:30 a.m. Thursday to pick up her son from a babysitter. Stakely, a single mother who was a speech therapist for the Canal Winchester Local Schools district, also worked as a waitress and had just finished a shift at that job, Columbus police said.

Stakely first took the sleeping boy to her car, which she had left running, and then went back to the babysitter’s to get the child’s things, police said. When she returned to her vehicle, Stakely saw someone backing out into the road and she ran to the car, yelling for her son and telling the driver to stop.

Stakely was hit by the car and fell to the pavement, sustaining a head injury. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The two men abandoned the car a short distance from where Stakely was struck, then ran past her as they fled by jumping a fence and entering a nearby apartment complex, police said. They remained at large Friday.

Police said surveillance footage earlier that morning showed a group of men searching apartments in a nearby complex. The descriptions of the men matched those of men later seen walking along Stakely.