I was fascinated to stumble upon a report of citizen heroism, buried deep in a Philadelphia Inquirer local news piece about carjackers targeting "high-end SUVs." A very brave woman resisted a pair of armed thugs who were trying to take her SUV away with her daughter in the back seat, and she actually managed to get the gun away from them -- shooting one in the process.

Instead of singling the woman out for the praise she deserves, the incident is being treated by police almost as an aberration which never should have happened.

...The drivers were female, the vehicles high-end, the keys taken along with the cars.

But for drama, what unfolded just after 4:30 p.m. on North Belfield Avenue in Havertown was most unique.

Police gave the following account: A 37-year-old woman had just left work at Sunny Days Early Childhood Development when she saw two men get out of a black Jeep and approach her Toyota Cruiser. They reportedly asked her about getting a job.

After she leaned into her car to get them a pen, the woman turned back around - only to be facing a handgun. She was told to give up her vehicle, but pleaded with the men to let her first retrieve her daughter from the backseat.

She did, and at the same time managed to grab a gun that one attacker had put on his lap as he tried to start the vehicle. Both attackers tried to take the gun out of her hand. During the struggle, the weapon went off and one carjacker was hit in the right thumb.

One attacker got back in her Cruiser and drove off; the other ran away and was later seen getting picked up on Peach Lane by a black Jeep.

Then, at 8:50 p.m., a 911 call came into Montgomery Township police about a black Range Rover stolen at gunpoint in the 100 block of Duchess Place, in the Tall Gables development just north of the intersection of Horsham and Upper State Roads.

The driver and her passenger, described by police as women in their mid-50s, were approached by two men fitting the description of the Havertown carjackers "who had their guns out and . . . demanded the keys," said Lt. Mark Houghtaling. The driver complied.

Houghtaling lauded that response. "If you are encountered by people like this . . . don't fight, don't put yourself in jeopardy."

I'm wondering...

Should the brave woman who resisted have let them drive away with her child too?

I realize that the police mean well when they tell people to always comply with criminal demands and never to resist, but can't this be carried too far? I mean, are we supposed to hide under our desks and wait our turn like the Virginia Tech shooting victims?

None of the three victims has been identified by police. The Havertown victim, approached at her home in Philadelphia, declined to comment about her decision to resist.

I might be old-fashioned, but I think the police should be thanking this woman. Most of the time the cops never catch carjackers, who usually use the vehicles in short crime sprees and then abandon them.

Ultimately, the fact that this bastard got shot in the hand during the struggle may have been what helped the police nail him.

By 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Philadelphia police had located her Toyota Cruiser in Cobbs Creek and sent in a surveillance team. As officers waited, they heard about the theft of the Range Rover in Montgomery Township. Not long after, a Range Rover pulled into the alley followed by a black Jeep. Police moved in. Two males in the Range Rover and the driver of the Jeep were taken into custody after police opened fire as one of the vehicles tried to run down an officer.

As of last night, Omaru K. Sannoh, 20, of Yeadon, and Unisa Kamara, 19, of Dale City, Va., had been charged by Havertown police with robbery of a motor vehicle, receiving stolen property and aggravated assault, among other offenses. Other charges in Philadelphia and Montgomery Township were expected.

Charges were also expected against a third man, Jakuba Komoram of Philadelphia. All three men are natives of Sierra Leone. Their immigration status had not been determined yesterday.

Sannoh was the man shot, and inside the Jeep, police recovered a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun covered with blood.

But citizens can.

Whoever this anonymous Havertown woman is, I think she should be praised. Acts of courageous resistance like hers do more to discourage criminals than gun control laws or uniformed police who file the usual reports which accumulate into the usual statistics.

My hat's off to her.

MORE: The Philadelphia Daily News has more details about the case, which apparently involves an international car-theft ring:

The suspects are believed to be part of a Liberian carjacking ring that is known to ship high-end vehicles out of the country, Sgt. Ray Evers, a city police spokesman, said.

Last night, the Delaware County District Attorney's Office announced it had filed robbery, assault and related charges against two of the men, Unisa Kamara, 19, and Omaru Sannoh, 20, both of whom are foreign nationals believed to be from Sierra Leone.

A third man, Jakuba Kamara, 29, also of Sierra Leone, was expected to be charged late last night, Joseph Brielmann, a spokesman for the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, said. Jakuba and Unisa are believed to be cousins.

As she stared down the gun's barrel, she pleaded not only for her own life, but for the life of her 7-year-old daughter, who was cowering in the car.

The men agreed to let the child go, and as the frightened mother snatched up her little girl, she also - in an astonishingly bold move - snatched up her attacker's handgun, which he'd left on his lap while starting the car, police said.

A brief struggle over the weapon followed, during which time the gun discharged once. Neither the woman nor her child was injured. Haverford police say it remains unknown if one of the attackers was shot in the scuffle.

"We're just fortunate that the situation didn't put anybody else in any harm and that no one was hurt in the struggle that ensued," Haverford Township Police Sgt. Shant Bedrossian said.

AND MORE: Until I saw this story, I didn't realize the extent of the problem involving stolen American SUVs shipped overseas. An investigative report in the Boston Globe revealed that these international car-theft rings are often linked to terrorists, and that the high end SUVs are popular with suicide bombers in Iraq, because they "blend in":

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 1 million cars were stolen from US streets in 2003, the most recent statistics available. Government officials think the vehicles insurgents use were stolen from locations as varied as Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Florida. Arizona reported more than 56,000 vehicles stolen last year, the largest per-capita number of thefts in the country.

Terrorism specialists think Iraqi insurgents prefer American stolen cars because they tend to be larger, blend in more easily with the convoys of US government and private contractors, and are harder to identify as stolen.

The new disclosures are part of a pattern, according to government officials. US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are increasingly finding links between violent Islamic extremists groups and vast criminal enterprises such as drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, and car theft.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has cut off some of the terrorists' access to money, including freezing bank accounts of suspect groups and individuals and pressuring Middle Eastern governments to terminate aid. But terrorist operatives have found other means to raise cash, acquire weapons, or gain other logistical help. Facing greater scrutiny, terrorist groups are increasingly using illegal, highly lucrative business arrangements to support their operations, according to the FBI and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Investigators say the criminal activities that terrorists use to raise money run the gamut from creating and selling fake documents to insurance fraud. Taliban and Al Qaeda followers are thought to be heavily involved in the expanding heroin trade in Afghanistan, and a US-based cigarette smuggling ring was linked to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon

James G. Conway, Jr., legal attache at the US Embassy in Mexico City, told the Globe that ''where you find terrorists you often find some kind of criminal activity."

Car theft, a criminal enterprise that costs US citizens more than $8 billion a year, now seems to have become a new enterprise for some terrorist groups, according to the law enforcement officials and private specialists.

''The car bomb is the top weapon in the world for carrying out terrorist attacks," said Lieutenant Greg Terp, commander of the Miami-Dade Police Department's Auto Theft Task Force. ''These car thieves don't necessarily know that they are financing terrorism, but they might."

The Boston Globe report also notes the keen interest shown by FBI's counterterrorism unit in these international stolen car rings.

(The FBI certainly wasted no time getting involved in an otherwise "local" Philadelphia carjacking.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Clayton Cramer for linking and quoting this post, in an interesting discussion of SUVs.

(I never gave it much thought, but now I'm wondering how much thought the number crunching economists have given to terrorism as a cause of global warming.)