AUBURN, Wash. — A family is feeling thankful for their lives, but frustrated and saddened after they tried to fight away thieves who stole their car.
Paige Burleson, her 17-year-old son Gavin, and her husband had just returned home from picking up dinner. Her husband parked as the two ran inside with food. That’s when Auburn Police say, a stolen car with five suspects inside, pulled up. The group got out and stole their Alfa Romeo.
But it didn’t happen without a fight.
Gavin jumped into the car, swinging his fists, getting many of the suspects out of the car.
“I ran in the car and started trying to get it back by fighting them,” Gavin said.
Paige ran out after her son, trying to pull some of the suspects off of him. She used her full weight to take one of them to the ground. Some of the suspects got out of the car. Four of them, Paige says, were teenagers younger than her own son.
“14 or 15 is the youngest because when I opened that door I was shocked, shocked to see a child younger than my child in there.” She recalled, “I almost said what are you doing here? Go home.”
The four teenagers were accompanied by a man, Gavin estimates in his upper 30s or 40s, that appeared to the family as leading the operation. As Gavin swung his fists, the suspects hit him with a gun several times.
“I didn’t even know I was being hit by the gun or anything until I finally stood up out of the car and I looked over to my left and a gun was being pointed at me.”
It’s at that point Gavin gave in, the reality of his life being on the line setting in. He was motivated by the importance of the car, nearly as much as he was taken over by the instinct to fight for what is theirs. Gavin still tried to plead to the humanity of the teenagers and man, screaming how hard his family had worked for the car that became a sense of stability for them.
“Finally when we made it as a family all three of us as a family together that was one of the first things we bought and just to lose it like that I really thought there was no way.”
Auburn Police Public Information Officer Kolby Crossley says detectives are assigned to the case, trying to use DOT cameras to track where the car went.
“This is really hard, he was in his vehicle, he just pulled into his parking spot and you think that when you’re pulling into your home you feel safe.”
Crossley says people should always weigh whether their life is worth fighting for what is theirs.
“You want to protect your belongings but at the same time you have to protect yourself,” he said.
It’s a conversation Paige has had with her son before. She had put cameras up around her house because of the crime she sees in the neighborhood.
“When you’re in the situation it is different the desperation, the frustration, that’s all he thought about he didn’t think about being killed he was thinking about if I was okay,” Paige said. “I’m more than proud. I don’t want any kid risking their life for anything, but I can’t be more proud of my son. the child that I raised turned into an amazing man and person.”
They moved back to Auburn seven years ago, into the condo that was the pride of her mother’s. They had lived in Lakeland Hills before that, what felt like a safe refuge for her family. The cost to keep two homes after her mother’s passing was too much, so she returned to the home that meant so much to them. The home where they’d end up fighting armed thieves.
“It was me her and Gavin for most of his life,” Paige said, “It was just us three so selling this place would have been like selling her, selling a piece of her and now I don’t think we can stay any more we just can’t.”
Masks and video have made it hard to identify or describe the suspects, Crossley says. For Paige, she thinks APD is doing the best they can with the workload and staffing they have. Though, as her son’s bruises heal, she thinks of how he and the other kids in Auburn deserve better than what city leadership has given them.
“if you’re not going to protect us we need someone who will who will speak for us and protect our city because it can be done.”