'They really messed up my life': Lehi employee recovering after being dragged by truck

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Mark Willson was injured confronting suspected thieves at A Mad Man's Hobby Store in Lehi.
Surveillance video showed two suspects stealing an RC car kit.
Riley Shelman and Gavin Huss face charges; a GoFundMe supports Willson's recovery.

LEHI — A Utah County man is recovering from multiple surgeries and injuries after police say he was hit and dragged by a truck while trying to confront two people suspected of stealing from the hobby store where he works.

Mark Willson said he remembers every detail of the Jan. 2 incident, which happened at A Mad Man's Hobby Store in Lehi.

Surveillance video from the store shows a young woman holding the door open while the man she was with grabs an RC car kit and walks out without paying. When his manager pointed it out, Willson ran outside to speak with the pair.

"I was just going to walk around the truck," he said. "I was going to walk up nice and say, 'Hey, what's going on? Why did you take that?' I just wanted to talk to him."

Willson said the truck suddenly began reversing, and he worried he would be pinned between the vehicle and his own car parked behind it.

"So that's when I just jumped up and ran, smushed between my car and his truck," he said. "It was a split second."

He remembers flying down the street, hanging onto the black truck.

Willson said the driver braked, causing him to slide off the side of the truck. When he tried to stand, he said the driver accelerated again, running over both his legs.

He became emotional recalling lying in the roadway afterward.

"Another guy just drove by," he said, crying. "He comes back and said, 'Are you all right?' I said, 'No, absolutely not,' because I looked down at my legs."

They were broken, along with his nose, and his eye sockets were fractured, among several other injuries.

Police arrested Riley Deborah Shelman, 21, and Gavin Drake Huss, 22, several days later. Shelman was taken into custody first. According to court documents, Huss later turned himself in to Provo police and brought the stolen Traxxas RC car with him.

Both are facing charges, including failure to remain at the scene of a serious injury accident and theft.

Willson said the ordeal has been devastating for his family.

"I just think they need to understand that it is very silly that you can take and not worry about somebody dying or being killed," he said.

Asked whether he would chase after suspected thieves again, given the injuries he suffered, Willson said the decision isn't simple.

"That's a tough call," he said. "You'd have to be there in the heat of the moment to decide what to do."

A *GoFundMe has been set up to help Willson and his family.

*KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisers and otherwise proceed at your own risk.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.