Nestor Santorio never imagined he'd be carjacked at gunpoint in broad daylight outside his own apartment building.
"I am in shock," he said, sharing his story two days later. "I'm still in shock."
Around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Santorio had just parked outside his home on Hillcrest Drive and Washington Street in Hollywood. He started unloading groceries from the trunk of his yellow Camaro when two young, masked men approached him with a gun.
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"I saw them walking," he remembered. But he didn't think anything of it, until one of them pulled out the gun. They put the gun on my stomach."
They demanded his keys, his wallet, his phone. The thieves got into his Camaro and took off, but not before Santorio's neighbor, Oleksandr Nehrii, spotted what was happening.
"My angel," Santorio said of Nehrii, who called 911.
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"I was going to get pizza," Nehrii said. But he and his friend spotted the carjacking and drove to the other side of the building, then called police.
"I start talking very fast," Nehrii recalled. "'They're robbing my neighbor right now, come here, like, fast fast fast.'"
Grappler maneuver
Hollywood police showed up in minutes, and the thieves in the Camaro did not get far.
One officer deployed a grappler tool to bring the car to a screeching stop.
Department spokeswoman Deanna Bettineschi explained how it works.
"Basically what this does, is it is on the front of a police vehicle and there's a netting that comes out and it wraps around the back tires of a fleeing vehicle and it brings it to a complete stop."
The department has six vehicles with the grappler tool on the front bumper. Santorio was impressed with what it can do.
"It's amazing," he said. "Like Spiderman."
Officers arrested two 17-year-olds inside the car. They say one of them tossed a gun out of the window during the chase. Both young men are now charged with felony robbery-carjacking with a firearm.
Santorio is grateful to be safe. He thought of his daughters when the thieves shoved the barrel of a gun against his body.
"You can lose your life," he said, fighting back tears. "You think about your family… it's very hard."
