Bodybuilder Stops Carjacking In Dyer, Indiana

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A man claims his bodybuilding routine helped him take down a man in an attempted carjacking in Dyer, Indiana on Sunday.

Dyer Police say the suspect tried to steal three different vehicles before the man, a father of three daughters, took him down.

"His hand was on the shift, trying to pull it," Eddy McCracken recalled.

Eddy McCracken said he didn't think, but rather, just reacted when carjacking suspect, Brian Stewart, jumped into his white Maximus and tried to steal it.

"Was it all adrenaline?" CBS 2's Dana Kozlov asked McCracken.

"Yeah, thinking back, he could have had a gun and stuff," he responded. "It took a couple tugs, but I got him out."

He said the struggle came down to brute force and sheer will.

"That's when I just started trying to get him out," McCracken said, claiming he held Stewart on the ground until Dyer, Indiana Police arrived to the scene.

Stewart and Dianna Krask had allegedly just robbed a Jewel in a stolen medical transport van and crashed it in an intersection before the attempted carjacking.

Dyer Police Chief David Hein said Stewart ran into a Walgreens parking lot and attempted to carjack an 18-year-old woman's car before getting to McCracken's Maximus.

"They opened the car doors, attempted to pull her out several times, striking her on the wrists, striking her in her legs," stated Dyer Police Chief David Hein.

"That makes me sick to my stomach just because I just think about what that girl went through. Had I known that, it would have been completely different. I would have been a lot meaner," McCracken stated.

McCrackin said he works out regularly, which he believes helped him get the upper hand in the fight.

"Well obviously we don't suggest that citizens intervene in police actions. This was such a chaotic chain of events that it helped us out this time," said Hein.

Dyer's police chief said Stewart was getting treatment for his injuries at a hospital when he escaped earlier this week and tried to steal another car. He is now facing additional charges.

There was a medical supply of blood in the stolen medical van. The police chief says it is now missing.