The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office on Monday afternoon held a news conference to discuss an arrest on Amelia Island.
On Friday, the Sheriff’s Office said, a report came in for an armed carjacking in the parking lot of the Harris Teeter grocery store. Two children were alone inside a vehicle at the time.
According to an arrest report involving the suspected carjacking, the mother parked her car outside the store and left her children in the car while she walked inside to get bottled water. While inside, she got a call from her teenage son who said the vehicle’s alarm was going off. When she got outside, she saw a man, later identified as Michael Hooper, sitting in the driver’s seat.
The teen, trying to protect his sister, got the guy in a headlock, according to deputies, before Hooper pulled out a .45 caliber handgun and fired a shot, which struck a nearby light pole. He then ran off, they said.
The kids got out of the car without being harmed. Hooper, a 31-year-old employee of Harris Teeter, turned himself in Saturday morning.
He told Nassau investigators he’d blacked out and thought the teen was trying to steal the car. He’s charged with armed carjacking and aggravated assault with a firearm.