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“We thought ‘Oh, we’d better help them out,’” Alm recalled in an interview Sunday.

The women had no idea the people waving for them to stop had apparently just committed an armed robbery at a Clavet-area home.

Benes was going to open her window but it was frozen stuck after she’d washed her car that day. As soon as the pair opened their doors, the two adults pulled them out of her Chevrolet Cruze.

Alm was thrown to the ground and kicked repeatedly.

“I couldn’t understand what was going on. I was shocked,” Alm said.

She stood, but the man threw her down again. The man was yelling “Get down, bitch. Stay down, bitch,” she said.

When she got up again, she could hear Benes screaming on the other side of the car. Before she could see what was going on, the vehicle sped off.

Benes, who’d also been thrown down after the rifle was pointed at her face and then chest, still had her cellphone. She called 9-1-1 and the pair started walking toward the nearby town of Clavet. They looked back and were terrified to see the vehicle turn around.

They ran into the ditch and tried to hide, thinking the assailants didn’t want to leave any witnesses who could identify them.

The vehicle didn’t stop and sped back toward Saskatoon. Alm’s cellphone remained in the car, so police tracked the signal to determine the car’s direction. However, the assailants apparently threw the phone out just before reaching Saskatoon, Alm said.

Police found and pursued the vehicle into the north end of Saskatoon and twice tried unsuccessfully to stop it with spike belts, according to police.