This is the terrifying moment a woman tried to fight off a carjacker after she returned home from work.
Elaine Roscoe, 54, had only stopped outside her Moston home for a matter of seconds before she was 'wrestling' with a robber over her car key.
Offenders targeted her seven-month-old BMW m235i and swooped as Elaine picked up her belongings from the front passenger seat.
She told the Manchester Evening News : "You see it in the news, all over social media, but when it happens to you it's surreal.
"You see it happening to other people and you think 'I would do this or that', but you react how you react.
"It's horrible. It's shocked me, it's angered me. I think it's every emotion you can think of.
"You don't come home and think 'who will carjack me?'."
After enjoying some time off over Christmas, Elaine returned to work as an accounts assistant in Rochdale last Wednesday (December 29).
She left the office at 5.05pm as normal and parked up behind her home on St Mary's Road around 30 minutes later, before walking to the passenger side to pick up her bag and some letters.
But as she gathered her belongings and prepared to go home, Elaine noticed something wasn't right.
She said: "I heard these feet running. I looked up and there was a lad shouting 'give me the key, give me the key'.
"I've never experienced anything like it in my whole life - it was a bit of a shock. I didn't take it all in straight away.
"He ran at me, and then we're basically fighting over this car key. I've worked hard for what I have ever since I left school - there was no way I was letting this key go.
"It was only seconds but it felt like minutes."
Elaine says that as one man tried to grab the BMW key from her grasp, a second offender started to approach her.
But the first man eventually managed to escape with the key and drive off in her car.
Elaine said: "I was screaming at my partner, 'they've got my car', and he came running back out."
Elaine called 999 after her BMW was driven away, before locating the car using an app on her phone which was linked to the vehicle's tracking device.
Neighbours rushed to help before police soon arrived - while Elaine was able to track the car down to where it had been stopped on Duncombe Drive, less than a mile away.
She says the offenders were able to rip out the tracking device, but did not act quickly enough to avoid it being recovered.
Elaine said: "I've been told that they usually move the car, and the last place it is tracked is where they have ripped it out, then you have no idea where it is.
"But luckily we were too quick for them."
Elaine, who moved to Moston 18 years ago, was showed CCTV from a neighbour who saw the offenders follow her BMW in a grey Fiat Punto.
As the carjacker dashed off in the BMW, the Punto was seen following it away from the scene.
Elaine, who is originally from Royton, is now waiting for her car to be repaired before it can return home.
Anyone with information about the incident can contact Greater Manchester Police online or by calling 101, quoting log number 2220 of December 29, 2021.
GMP was approached for comment.
