Parents Melanie and Aaron Richman Attack Carjacker in Kansas City to Save Their Baby

(Nov. 26) -- They were standing just a few yards away, talking to family in the final hours of a long road trip, when a man jumped into their idling car at a Kansas City, Mo., gas station and sped off with their 6-month-old daughter strapped in the back seat.

Their hearts pounding, Melanie and Aaron Richman ran. She was able to grab onto the passenger side and smash the window with her elbow. He somehow pulled himself inside the car and started punching and kicking the carjacker.

"I was just sitting upside down in the passenger seat kicking him and telling him my baby was in the car. 'You're stealing my car. Get out of my car,'" yelled 22-year-old Aaron Richman, ABC News reported.

His wife managed to hold on while being dragged, scrambling to stay with baby Samantha. "I was just holding on for dear life. Wherever she was going to go, I was going to go with," Melanie said.

The would-be thief jumped a curb and ran. Police are still searching for him, and Kansas City Police Chief James Corwin asks on his blog site for help in finding the unidentified man.

The parents suffered cuts and bruises, and Samantha was covered in broken glass but not hurt, The Kansas City Star reported.

Surveillance video shows the couple stopping their 1997 Pontiac at the Kansas City gas station. The family, in a caravan with two other vehicles driven by relatives, were moving from Colorado to southeast Missouri and had stopped to stretch their legs and fuel up after 12 hours of driving.

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On tape, Aaron is seen playing with baby Samantha outside the car and then strapping her back into her car seat. As the parents step just out of the frame to talk with Melanie's mother and brother, who were gassing up two moving vans, a man in a hoodie jumps into the Pontiac.

Police credited the Richmans with quick thinking, and saving their daughter during what should have been a routine pit stop.

"You just can't be too careful," police spokesman Steve Young told Reuters. "It's a terrible thing."