An Old Orchard Beach man faces kidnapping charges for allegedly stealing a car with a sleeping woman inside early Thursday and refusing to let her leave.
Damion Joyce, 51, was arrested at around 12:30 a.m., just minutes after he allegedly got into the driver’s seat of a vehicle parked on the Payne Road Corridor in Scarborough and drove off down Haigis Parkway, Scarborough communications director Joseph Thornton said.
The woman woke up and asked Joyce to let her out, but he refused and continued driving, police said. The woman called 911 and, after sharing her location, put her phone on speaker so that dispatchers could speak directly to Joyce. They asked him what he was doing and why, “trying to make him understand or realize that it wasn’t his car,” Thornton said.
Dispatchers convinced Joyce to pull over, but police said he warned officers he would attack them and suggested that they “bring their guns,” Thornton said. But when officers arrived to intercept Joyce on Route 1, he obeyed their commands and was taken into custody.
Thornton declined to share the woman’s identity but said she often sleeps in her car. First responders evaluated her at the scene and determined that she was not injured.
Joyce was charged with Class A kidnapping, criminal restraint and theft. He was taken to the Cumberland County Jail.
Thornton praised the communications team, particularly the rookie dispatcher who answered the woman’s call, for their handling of a situation he said was unusual.
“Her ability to recognize that she was able to control the situation better by speaking directly to the suspect to distract him away from the victim – that’s something we would expect from an experienced, veteran dispatcher,” he said. “Great dispatchers are working in the background and achieving that kind of success every day.”
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