UPDATE: Columbia parolee charged with trying to carjack customer outside Grindstone Parkway Walmart

By Zimmer Communications
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Boone County prosecutors have charged 68-year-old Timothy Donnell with felony vehicle hijacking (2022 photo courtesy of the Missouri Department of Corrections website)

A Columbia parolee convicted of robbing and sodomizing a woman in 1991 is now charged with trying to carjack a woman in broad daylight in February outside the Walmart on Grindstone Parkway.

Boone County prosecutors have charged 68-year-old Timothy Donnell with one count of vehicle hijacking, which is a class A felony. Donnell was sentenced to 63 years in prison for robbery and three counts of sodomy for the 1991 Columbia incident, but he was paroled from prison in 2022 after serving 30 years of the sentence.

Donnell was arraigned in Boone County Circuit Court on Thursday (yesterday) on the vehicle hijacking charge and is jailed without bond.

The Columbia Police Department’s heavily-redacted three-page probable cause statement says Donnell approached the woman in the busy Walmart parking lot at about 2:30 in the afternoon on Friday February 2. Court documents allege that Donnell asked her if she was done using her shopping cart, which she gave to him. As she was getting ready to drive away, Donnell allegedly asked her if she lost her phone and had a handgun pressed across his stomach, according to court documents. Donnell then allegedly told the woman to “get over” or “scoot over.”

Walmart security video records Donnell approaching the woman. Missouri’s Probation and Parole Board is expected to issue a warrant for his arrest soon.

Court documents say the 1991 Columbia incident is “is in the same general location” as the February alleged attempted carjacking. The victim in the 1991 incident was robbed, assaulted and sodomized.