‘They really messed up my life’: Utah employee recovering after being dragged by truck

LEHI, Utah (KSL.com) — 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.

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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.