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

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

The boy was unharmed, police said, and no other injuries were reported.

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

Stakely initially brought the sleeping boy to her car, which she had left running, then returned to the babysitter’s unit to get the child’s belongings, police said. As she returned to her vehicle, Stakely saw someone starting to back it out onto the roadway and she ran toward the car, screaming for her son and telling the driver to stop.

Stakely was struck by the car and knocked to the pavement, suffering a head injury. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.

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

Surveillance video had recorded a group of men looking into apartments in another nearby complex earlier that morning, according to police, who said they matched the description of the men later seen running past Stakely.