CLEVELAND — Thieves with guns targeted a valet parking lot in Ohio City in the middle of the day on Monday.
It happened in a lot behind a commercial building on West 25th Street near Lorain Avenue, nea
The crime wasn't far from the West Side Market and a nearby neighborhood.
It isn't how Sam Esposito thought his last week of work would be before returning to Ohio State.
"Just mad; we had just paid off the car," Esposito said.
A glimmer of hope came 24 hours later when a white Hyundai Elantra like his caught his eye from his office window.
"I thought it was mine, but not mine," Esposito said.
He says the valet was pretty shaken up when she came running up to him after he returned from lunch to say a car was stolen.
"She said that a gunman pointed a gun at her, and she, like, hid in the corner," Esposito said.
Esposito says his car was locked with no valuables in plain view.
But the thieves smashed a window and hotwired it anyway.
"Take it for a joyride; the cops were saying that's what they do.
Cleveland police have been dealing with stolen cars and carjackings all summer.
"They were trying to f'... kill us for sure, like in the middle of the street," said one woman.
The woman is seen on a police body camera video from just before midnight on July 19.
The possible attempted carjacking happened near the casino Downtown.
"We were stopped at a red light like a Hyundai, and a silver SUV came up real quick what looked like to me was an automatic weapon," the woman said.
In the video, the woman tells police they backed up into a parked car to get away. Police say it might have been a possible carjacking.
In a separate case on July 20, a woman was punched during a carjacking on East 73rd Street and Chester Avenue.
They took off in her Durango.
A resident in Ohio City said it's concerning.
"It's incredible. I don't believe this represents the neighborhood at all because our neighborhood's really been booming, but it's scary," Mike Shea said.
Shea has lived in the neighborhood since the 90s.
"Sometimes you get people breaking into cars and stuff like that, but overall you don't see anything like this," Shea said.
Esposito says when something like this happens, it changes a lot.
For him, it's another car payment if his car isn't recovered.
"It's just crazy these people need to be off the street and find something else to do than steal cars and do whatever they want with them; it shouldn't be this easy," Esposito said.
The valet company told News 5 they're working with the ownership on a plan to make things safer from here on out.
The car the victim thought was his was a stolen car, according to a man who says it's his. He told me it happened to him a few months ago.
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