Extra

When a Whole Foods shopper stabbed a would-be carjacker with a pair of scissors, she did more than fend him off: She inadvertently collected the DNA that would lead to an arrest. 

The Dec. 30, 2008 incident in the Whole Foods parking lot on Telegraph Avenue was the first of at least three linked to the man arrested Thursday morning in Oakland by Berkeley police. 

According to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Andrew J. Frankel, police arrested 52-year-old Paul Anthony McGruder during an early Thursday morning search of his residence in the 5900 block of Camden Street after DNA tests had linked him to the crime. 

The chain of crimes began at 10:30 a.m. on the second to last day of 2008 when a man with a gun approached a woman in the supermarket parking lot and ordered her into her car. 

After she had seated herself, the woman screamed, prompting the gunman to punch her in the face and then try to take control of the car himself. At that point, the woman came up with the scissors and stabbed them into the gunman’s neck, prompting him to abandon the carjacking. 

Spotting another potential victim in the parking lot, he tried and failed again, finally succeeding minutes later when he confronted a driver on Halcyon Court, where he managed to get his hands on a 2008 Subaru and fled the scene. 

Following his arrest, McGruder was taken to Alameda County Jail and booked on three counts of carjacking and one count of kidnapping during the commission of a carjacking, Frankel reported.