SALT LAKE CITY — Raneal Christensen kept telling himself he needed to remain calm even though he was "freaking out" inside.

Keeping cool, however, was a tall order considering the man threatening him was holding a gun and had just tried to shake him off the hood of a moving car that accelerated to 60 mph.

"I remember him vividly saying, 'Do you want to die tonight?'" Christensen recalled.

What happened next surprised not only police, but also left the alleged gunman confused.

Rather than run away or try to take the gun away from the man, Christensen instead got the idea to jump into the passenger seat of the man's car.

"I read the situation enough (and) got into his car and closed the door," he said. "He gets into his car pretty quick and was like, 'What are you doing?'"

Since that day, Christensen has been called "Superman" and "Double 0" (like 007, James Bond) by his friends. His actions prompted police to use words like "surprisingly" and "an amazing turn of events" when describing in their reports how he went from clinging for his life to convincing the man to return to the scene of the original crime.

The alleged gunman, Jordan James Crayton, 25, of Salt Lake City, was charged in 3rd District Court with theft by receiving stolen property, a second-degree felony; two counts of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony; failing to remain at a crash with injuries, a class A misdemeanor; DUI, a class B misdemeanor; possession of drug paraphernalia, a class B misdemeanor; carrying a dangerous weapon while under the influence of alcohol, a class B misdemeanor; giving false information to a police officer, a class C misdemeanor; and having an open container in a vehicle, a class C misdemeanor.

In court on Friday, Crayton — wearing slacks, a long-sleeved blue dress shirt and a tie — stood quietly next to his attorney as 3rd District Judge Vernice Trease scheduled a preliminary hearing for Nov. 29.

This week, Christensen shared publicly for the first time his amazing story and talked about what was going through his head during a wild series of events that found him holding on for life onto the hood of a speeding car to sitting shotgun next to the man who he says moments earlier had tried to injure or kill him.

'I was frightened'

On Aug. 29, Christensen and his girlfriend, Somerville Hosier, were stopped at the intersection of 300 East and 3300 South when a Jaguar plowed into his car from behind. Hosier suffered a neck injury from whiplash, and Christensen's car sustained "substantial" damage, according to charging documents.

Christensen said he got out of his car to go check on the man who had just hit him.

"I knocked on his windshield, asked if he was OK — mind you I was directly in front of his car. He seemed to respond, backed up, drove froward and struck me with his car," he recalled.

That hit was more of a bump, and Christensen said he wasn't injured. But his instinctive reaction was to grab the top part of the hood.

"I grabbed onto his hood. I was frightened, I didn't know what to do. So I'm on the right side of his car, the passenger side, I'm holding onto the hood. And he narrowly misses my car with me (holding onto his car) and he makes a U-turn," he said.

Charging documents say Christensen "jumped on the hood of the Jaguar" to try and prevent the driver from leaving. He says that's not entirely true.

"I'm crazy, but I'm not insane," he said.

Hosier looked up just as the Jaguar drove off with her boyfriend still hanging onto the side of the car.

"She says, 'I look around behind me and the first thing I see is the car that had struck us making a U-turn with my boyfriend's legs flailing off the top of it,'" Christensen recounted.

As the vehicle made its way to State Street, it made a hard right turn, but Christensen hung on.

"I'm sitting there dangling off the side of the vehicle. I don't know, the adrenaline kicked in, I'm scared to death. I don't want to get run over, I don't want to go under the wheels. I don't know what's going on. I'm screaming at the guy, 'Hey man, you can't run. Just stop the car,'" he said.

"I was so scared, I don't know why I was holding on. I just was … I hunkered in and just dug my hands in."

Even a month later, the injuries to Christensen's hands are still visible with several cuts, bruises and at least one blackened fingernail from clenching the hood so tightly.

The turn onto State Street propelled Christensen's body directly onto the hood of the car. Police estimate Crayton then accelerated to 60 mph and tried to shake Christensen off the car. He was "swerving to the left and to the right, trying to hit me on parked cars, he went over a curb once. It was crazy," Christensen recalled.

"I knocked on the windshield after being on the hood for a long time and said, 'Hey, pull over. You can't run. Everybody saw you. You've got to pull over. I'm not falling off this car. You've got to pull over," he said.

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Threatened man convinces drunken gunman to give up, police say

Raneal Christensen was clinging for his life onto the hood of a car going 60 mph before police say the driver stopped and pulled a gun on him. Somehow, Christensen remained calm enough to talk the driver into surrendering.

Fear to confidence

Approximately five minutes later, after Crayton apparently realized he wasn't going to be able to shake Christensen off his car, he pulled off into a neighborhood, stopped the car and got out. At this point, Christensen said he thought the worst was over.

"Next thing he does though, instead, is he pulls out a gun. I remember him vividly saying, 'Do you want to die tonight?'" he said.

Christensen said he was "freaked out," but "the only thing I'm thinking is, 'You've got to calm down.'"

That's when Christensen began to look over Crayton more closely and he said he realized the man was intoxicated.

"He seemed more scared than anything," he said. "I'm assuming he just wanted it to end. He wanted the string of scary things that were happening to him while he was intoxicated to end."

Christensen describes himself as the type of person who is there for his friends when they need help, sometimes when they're intoxicated, and he believes he is able to read them and "read situations" well. And once he realized what he thought was going on with Crayton, his fear switched to confidence.

"He did threaten me. He did threaten me with a weapon. But after I got him to calm down and put it away, to get the meaning behind (his actions), I felt that he was a good guy beneath all of these awful things he was doing, and I felt that he was just really scared and trying to get away," he said.

Christensen then switched the focus of the conversation to Crayton and kept asking him if he was OK. His next move, however, apparently confused Crayton.

Christensen jumped into his car and shut the door.

"He's all confused. He's swearing. He's saying incoherent things, like he's obviously drunk," he said.

But Christensen said he kept telling him, "Calm down. Are you OK? Are you OK? We just got into a car accident. We need to go back."

Crayton put his gun on the center console and started driving. Christensen said he then tried to convince the driver to go back to the original crash scene.

"I lied. I said my girlfriend is pregnant, I need to check on her," he said. "I feel bad about it, but I felt it was necessary in that situation."

Christensen continued to tell Crayton that he wasn't worried about insurance companies or police and kept encouraging him to drive back.

"Dude, we've got to go back. What are you doing? We've got to go check on her," he told him.

After stopping the car and putting the gun in the trunk of the car, Christensen said Crayton agreed to drive back to the scene as long as Christensen didn't contact the insurance company. He even allegedly offered him $1,000 cash out of his pocket if he wouldn't report the crash.

Police were still at the scene when they got close to the area. Crayton said he didn't want to drive any further and, according to Christensen, asked him to lie to officers and tell them that Crayton had picked him up off the side of the road after falling off the hood of another car.

But as soon as Crayton got near the original crash scene, his vehicle was swarmed by officers. Investigators began questioning the two, and Christensen said he told the lie of being picked up. But while he told the story, he tried at the same time to strongly hint to the officer that they needed to get him away from Crayton.

"As he's talking to me … I'm signaling with my hands like, 'You need to separate us because I'm going to tell you a different story,'" he said.

Once Christensen was separated from Crayton, he told the officer, "Oh yeah, he's got a gun in his trunk and he's actually the person who hit me. I just convinced him to come back to the scene of the crime."

When police searched the vehicle, a glass cup containing vodka was found in the center console of the Jaguar, the interior "smelled strongly of marijuana," and a .45 ACP pistol that was determined to be stolen was found in the trunk, according to charging documents.

Contributing: McKenzie Romero

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