Police: man carjacked twice, held woman and infant hostage on 40 mile crime spree

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Two carjackings, a woman and her baby held hostage, and a forty-mile trip from start to finish. These are the crimes Derick Taylor faces in two counties.

On probation for five years for beating a man with a pipe in 2021, he’s back in jail after being arrested for a series of carjackings and assaults from last month. The penultimate charge, holding a woman and her three-month-old hostage as he sped their car down the freeway at 100 miles an hour.

Police said Derick Taylor’s crime spree started in Louisville’s Russell neighborhood at the intersection of 30th and Market where he blew a stop sign and crashed into another car. Still able to drive it he ended up crashing into a parked car at the Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center. His ride now toasted, police said he carjacked another one with a handgun and took off, ultimately ending up on I-64 heading east. Around the Cannons Lane exit police said Taylor hit several other cars.

This ride now failing, he dumped it behind the Buca Di Beppo restaurant on Hurstbourne. He headed north and carjacked another car at the Petco. Inside the car, a woman and her three-month-old. He then put pedal to the metal, careening down the freeway at 100 miles per hour.

Police said he punched the woman, threw her phone out of the car window and forced her to undress, grabbing her repeatedly for the 20-mile trip. The car gave out in Waddy, where Shelby County deputies got a call from the Post Office next to the Waddy Baptist Church.

“A male subject was trying to get into a vehicle behind the Post Office,” Captain Blake Lisby said. “The employee there yelled at him and at which point he ran off.”

He said they sent a police dog after Taylor and found him hiding under an abandoned car in a tree line down the hill.

“Ultimately led a track straight through the woods and within a few minutes they had him in custody,” said Lisby.

He said this is one of the craziest cases he’s seen over his career.

“Probably top ten,” Lisby said.

Taylor was already on probation after being given a five-year suspended prison sentence for the beating in 2021. The probation violation has not been brought to court yet.

Meanwhile, a judge kept Taylor’s bond here at LMDC at $500,000 cash only.

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