This time, Hui Zhao was determined not to let someone get away with his Toyota.
Zhao (pictured) was delivering Chinese food to a home Wednesday when he saw someone jump into his idling car. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to steal his car in the two short months he’s spent working in New Haven.
Zhao works at Wok On In, a Chinese fast-food restaurant at 1409 Chapel St., across the street from the Hospital of St. Raphael. Wednesday night, as rain streamed down outside, Zhao got a call for a delivery just around the corner.
He loaded the feast into his car — chicken, broccoli and garlic, shrimp lo mien — and drove a couple blocks away to Hotchkiss Street. It was about 9 o’clock, pretty dark. He parked on the quiet, one-block-long street. He rang the bell at number 37.
Monique Kendrick (pictured), 21, answered the door.
“He came, rang my doorbell, and left the car running,” Kendrick recalled, sitting on her porch railing Thursday afternoon. “As soon as he rings the doorbell, a man jumped in the car.”
The man was from Olive Street. He had been lurking around the neighborhood earlier that day, Kendrick said.
When Zhao saw the man behind the wheel of his Toyota, he ran to save it.
“The guy tried to jump my car,” recounted the Chinese immigrant in broken English. “He want to go.” Zhao dove his torso in through the open driver’s side window and tried to snatch the key out of the ignition.
The thief swerved, smashing the car into the back of a parked car.
The rest is blurry in Zhao’s memory. At some point, he got elbowed in the chest and was thrown onto the pavement of the street. As he lay there, a crowd of neighbors emerged to the rescue.
Kendrick, who was standing on her porch, remembered the scene a bit more clearly.
“When the car crashed, everybody heard the impact,” she recalled. Fifteen to 20 neighbors came out in the street, she said. When they saw that one of their cars had been smashed, they rushed in.
“Everybody just ran in from everywhere.” They pulled the runaway driver out of the car. The thief tried to run. Then he got tackled by a group of guys.
“Everyone pinned him against the fence,” Kendrick recalled.
Five or 10 minutes later, police arrived, Zhao said. He estimated seven or eight men had come to his rescue. The suspect, age 31 of Olive St., was charged with third-degree robbery and first-degree larceny, according to police.
Zhao emerged with a few aches and pains but did not need hospital treatment. He was back at work on Thursday, in the kitchen with an apron on.
He looked rattled by the experience, and concerned by the big new dent to his auto.
“This is my only car,” he said. “It’s my wife’s car.”
The first two months in New Haven have been tough, he said. He moved in above the restaurant, which his sister owns, two months ago, and started helping her out in the kitchen, and occasionally as a driver.
Just one month ago, he had the same thing happen: He left the car idling on Sherman Avenue only to find it whisked away. The thief rode around in the car for 10 days before cops recovered it, Zhao said. The thief took his iPod, too.
Officer Joe Avery, the police department’s neighborhood specialist, has compiled a list of safety tips to keep drivers from being the victims of crime. One of those tips is never to leave the engine running. (Click here for a backstory with another deliverer’s take on the dangers of the job).
Zhao said he’s afraid for his safety when he goes out at night. He said he’d prefer to remain in the kitchen: “I’m a cooking man.”
Zhao’s car remained safely stored behind the restaurant Thursday. Meanwhile, a group of young men started hanging out again on Hotchkiss, where the crash had happened, at about quarter to five o’clock.
None of them owned up to being the heroes who wrestled the perp and rescued the immigrant’s car.
“Honestly, I was too fucked up last night,” said one man. Another took a swig from a forty and didn’t say a word. The owner of the car, holding a small girl in his arms, didn’t want to be interviewed about the wrestling match.
He pointed to where his car had been crushed in the rear end, adding up to $3,500 of damage.
“Now it wobbles,” he said.
Across the street, Kendrick felt sorry for starting the whole thing. She said when she saw Zhao struggling with broken English, she tried to step in and help him explain to police what had happened.
“I was the actual one who ordered the food, so I felt bad,” she said. “He probably won’t be delivering here no more.”