A quick-thinking 8-year-old girl saved herself and her baby sister in Wisconsin Sunday morning when a carjacker stole their dad’s car while they were still in the backseat.
Charley and 2-year-old Autumn Jorgenson were waiting for their father to finish buffing their SUV after going through a car wash near South Milwaukee when a stranger jumped in the running car and peeled out of the lot.
“That guy was trying to steal our car, I should do something,” Charley recalled to WTMJ.
“I should try to kick him or defend myself and Autumn. But then, I was like, I should stay in my seat and do nothing. Stay here, do the questions but when I realized that dad had the key, I was like, he can’t do anything without the key.”
After demanding the keys from the girls and realizing they didn’t have them, the stranger yelled at Charley to get out of the car, but she refused to leave her little sister.
That’s when the man ditched the car about a mile up the road and the clever 8-year-old dove for the cell phone her dad had left in the front seat, leaving her mom a desperate voicemail.
“Mom,” Charley can be heard shouting through tears. “I need you! We lost Dad!”
Autumn, seemingly aware of the brush with danger she and her sister had just experienced, can be heard in the background saying, “Where go dada?”
Fortunately, their father, Adam Jorgenson, was on the phone with 911 dispatchers while his wife worked to track down his iPhone, which pinpointed the girls’ exact location just minutes away from the car wash.
Police recovered the SUV and reunited the girls with their father back at the scene of the crime.
“I ran as fast as I could out of the back of that cop car to hug them,” Jorgenson told the outlet.
According to the father of two, he was only an “arms-length” away from the car, which he left running, when the thieves pounced.
Two men inside a purple Buick Encore parked nearby asked Jorgenson for directions in an attempt to distract him while their accomplice slipped into the SUV.
Both cars sped off, with Jorgenson shouting that there were kids inside.
“I was scared,” Charley said. “I was like, what’s happening?”
“He asked me, where are the keys?” she continued.
“I was like, that’s a good thing that my dad has the keys. So I told him, my dad has the keys. Then, he told me to get out and I was like, what should I do? Should I run and be a scaredy cat or should I save my sister too so I said, what about Autumn?”
Her decision to stay put and stay come may have just saved her and her sister’s lives, her father said.
“It makes me really proud that we’re raising our daughter to be sufficient on her own, to think about not just herself and others and then, how can I best get out of this situation?” Jorgenson said.
“How can I best resolve it? What should I do? Should I sit back or should I take action?”
Police have since arrested three men — aged 21, 20 and 17 — in connection to the terrifying crime.
The Oak Creek Police Department did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for further information regarding their charges, though officials said felony charges are pending.
The carjacking is still under investigation.
