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Police Cuff Suspect Accused of Failed Carjackings at Pediatrician’s Office

DICKSON CITY — Police say one man caused chaos at a pediatrician’s office and tried force two drivers to give him a ride. He is now in police custod...

DICKSON CITY -- Police say one man caused chaos at a pediatrician's office and tried force two drivers to give him a ride. He is now in police custody.

The man is under arrest after police say he tried to carjack two vehicles in the parking lot of a pediatricians office in Lackawanna County.

Officers nabbed the man after a manhunt in the woods near the busy shopping district in Dickson City.

Amir Whitehurst seemed to have a lot to say to the law as he sat handcuffed in the tall grass along Viewmont Drive in Dickson City.

One woman was too rattled to speak on camera but told Newswatch 16 about her ordeal with her two small children.

When the first victim came out of the doctors office, she noticed her car had been broken into and her phone was missing. She saw the suspect and told him to give her back her phone and he did it.

She says Whitehurst then asked her for a ride, but when she refused. She added that he reached his hand in the window before she managed to back her car away.

Police say the unarmed man then tried to get inside a pickup truck, but the driver grabbed the door and knocked him down.

"He was asking them for a ride, he needed a ride. He wanted their vehicle. Then, he was asking for their phone, he wanted to make phone calls, and the gentleman said 'no, I am calling the police, you can used the police phone when they get here,'" said William Bilinski, Dickson City Police Chief.

Whitehurst ran into the woods where it took police from several Lackawanna County departments about half an hour to find him.

When Scott Falzone and his son Eric arrived for their doctors appointment, they were surprised to find a crime scene.

"I don't know it is just crazy that it even happened, I  would not expect something like that happening here," said Scott Falzone of Tunkhannock.

Jamie Lambert, of East Benton, says the commotion scared her son Joaquin.

"It is scary that they are coming up to children's doctors offices, and the mall, who knows where he could have gone next, or what he could have done, you know what i mean that is kind of scary," said Lambert.

Police in Scranton say Whitehurst, who is from Allentown, is the suspect in a number of crimes including a robbery around midnight at the Convenient Food Mart on Pittston Avenue.

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