77-year-old driver attacked by carjacker

By Samantha Chaney

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    NEWBURYPORT, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A carjacking suspect was arrested in Rhode Island Friday night after police said he stole a man’s car from his driveway in Newburyport, Massachusetts earlier in the day.

At around 3 p.m. on Friday, 77-year-old Michael Doyle said he was returning home and getting out of his car on High Street when a man, now identified by police as 46-year-old David Agneta, walked towards him and started making demands.

“He said, ‘Give me those keys’ and I said no,” said Doyle. He claimed Agneta then grabbed his hand “and we were having kind of a tug of war, I guess, because I was still in shock. And the keys slipped out of my hand or his and I fell over backwards with my bad knee.”

Agneta then allegedly shoved Doyle to the ground, took his keys and drove off with his car. Doyle said he was unable to fight back because he recently had knee replacement surgery.

“I was on my back and I couldn’t get up if I wanted to,” recalled Doyle. “My wife threw a bucket of water at him but, of course, that didn’t help much.”

Police said Doyle was treated at the scene by paramedics.

“Thank God he wasn’t armed” “Thank God he wasn’t armed because I was hopeless,” said Doyle. “He could have stabbed me 15 times. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect someone to come walking across my lawn with malice in his mind.”

Rhode Island State Police arrested Agneta more than 100 miles away from Newburyport in Exeter, Rhode Island Friday night and charged him with possession of a stolen motor vehicle. Newburyport Police have charged him with two counts of carjacking and assault and battery on an elderly or disabled person.

Agneta is expected to be arraigned in court Monday morning in Rhode Island. He’ll be brought back to Massachusetts at a later date to be arraigned on those charges.

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