Carjacking victim was locked in his trunk all weekend

If this week didn't get off to as good a start as you might have liked, here's something that'll help put things in perspective: At least you didn't spend all weekend locked in the trunk of your car like one local guy did.

The man, whose name wasn't reported by the Chronicle or TV stations, said he was driving along 15th Street in South Houston around midnight Friday when a woman approached his car and solicited sex. He said he didn't want to pay her for sex, but did offer to drive her to a motel — which, in retrospect, we bet he wishes he hadn't done — and that's when an armed man came up and forced the driver into the trunk. "The two of them made him get out of the car and put him in the trunk. He said from that point on he was basically in the trunk all weekend," South Houston Police Chief Herbert Gilbert told KTRK.

For the next 60 hours or so, the man drifted in and out of sleep in the trunk as the carjackers drove around. He said he could occasionally hear women's voices coming from the car and he knew they stopped three times for gas. Every time the car would be stopped where people might hear the man yelling for help, he said the carjackers would turn the radio up. At some point Sunday afternoon, the carjackers abandoned the car at a business in Pasadena, but it still took a day before anyone heard the guy trying to get out of the trunk. "It was freaky hearing someone out there in a car," Pamela Gauthier, who found the man, told KHOU. "And then especially opening up the trunk and seeing someone get out of it … you never thought it would happen to you, or around you. It's just a frightening thing, you know."

Fortunately, the man wasn't hurt — just tired, hungry and dehydrated. He described the woman who initially approached him as Hispanic, about 5 feet, 4 inches tall, around 130 pounds, with purple or maroon streaks in her hair. Anybody with information should call the South Houston police at 713.944.1910.