'I made a mistake,' says mom of wild ride

Blythe Jarrett said she needed the car. It was her lifeline, her means to get to class at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, to go to the store to feed her children, to visit the psychologist treating her for postpartum depression.

So when her 23-year-old ex-boyfriend took her keys and got behind the wheel Tuesday, all she said she could think to do was get on the hood to keep him from going. Even though she held her 4-month-old daughter in her arms.

And she stayed when he started the engine after she climbed aboard.

"I know I made a mistake," Jarrett, 26, of St. Paul, said Friday, sitting on the sofa in a friend's apartment. "At the time, I didn't think my daughter would be harmed. I didn't think that he would pull out."

But Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said charging Jarrett wasn't a tough call: "She had multiple opportunities to stop this reckless behavior."

Jarrett was jailed and charged with gross misdemeanor child endangerment before being released Thursday. Her ex-boyfriend, Rarity Abdullah, faces the same charge and was released.

Jarrett's two children have been taken from her, the car is gone and, she said, she's been portrayed as a bad person in accounts about her high-speed mile-and-a-half ride while clinging to her daughter.

"I'm not trying to justify it. But it seems to me that the media is trying to portray that I wanted to be on the hood of the car. That wasn't the case," Jarrett said, her voice rising and her leg shaking. "I thought I could keep my lifeline. But it was all in vain."

According to the complaint filed against Jarrett and her ex-boyfriend, the car hit speeds of up to 50 miles per hour while Jarrett held onto the hood and her baby. Abdullah took U-turns, ran over a curb and ran a red light. And Abdullah and some witnesses told police that he also stopped several times so Jarrett could get off.

Jarrett disputes that.

"In my mind, he never stopped," she said, adding that she can't recall anybody shouting to her to get off the car and come with them, as one witness told police.

Police spokesman Tom Walsh said a number of witnesses confirm that the car stopped and that Jarrett apparently refused to get off the hood.

The ordeal was another chapter in a run of poor decisions by Jarrett, she admitted. In May, she was stopped for drunken driving while her kids were in the car. Her car was impounded. Her blood-alcohol level was .08. On Sunday, she and a friend were arrested in Maplewood for shoplifting about $100 worth of merchandise.

Jarrett said they were stealing soap and other necessities that food stamps don't cover.

Along the way, she said, she's been trying to break free of her relationship with Abdullah. They broke up last week, she said. Now she has to work to regain her children, find another job and get back into school, Jarrett said. She wants to go into radiology.

County child protection workers told her they would help her get her life back on track if she's serious about improving.

Jarrett added: "I don't even know how I got to this point. I really don't."

James Walsh • 651-298-1541 • jwalsh@startribune.com