November 10, 2011
Gary Davidson
Public Information Officer

GOOD SAMARITAN HELPS FOIL JUVENILE CARJACKING SUSPECTS

Two boys, ages 12 and 16, left their group home in Enterprise on Wednesday and decided to head to Daytona Beach. Only problem was that they didn’t have any transportation. What happened next has landed the boys in hot water: They tried to carjack two different victims Wednesday night, including a 74-year-old man who walks with the aid of a cane. Both boys were nabbed Wednesday night after a witness intervened, yanked one of the boys from a car and detained both suspects for responding Volusia County Sheriff’s deputies. Seif Khan and Kenneth Pfunter were taken to the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Daytona Beach, where they face two counts each of carjacking. 

The Sheriff’s Office was first called to the scene after receiving a report at 7:52 p.m. about an attempted carjacking in the parking lot of the Publix on Doyle Road in Deltona. The victim, a 74-year-old Osteen man, told responding deputies that he was just leaving the supermarket when the boys came up from behind him, implied they were armed and threatened to shoot the victim if he didn’t hand over his car keys. The victim, however, refused to give in. Instead, he raised his cane in an aggressive manner and yelled out for someone to call the police. That sent the boys running. Deputies were on-scene within two minutes and began setting up a perimeter and launching a search for the suspects. However, at 8:02 p.m., deputies received another call about a second attempted carjacking at a nearby 7-Eleven. In that case, the intended victim was a 29-year-old Deltona woman who was parked by the gas pumps when she was approached by one of the boys – Khan, the older one -- asking for money. When she refused, the suspect demanded her car keys. The victim turned over her keys and then fled to the store to get help. The help, however, was close by. A man who also had been approached by the suspects asking for a ride grabbed one of the boys from the car and then detained both until deputies arrived to take them into custody.

Both boys were transported to the juvenile detention center, but not before Khan was taken to the hospital to be checked out after he started acting dazed and disoriented.