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Theodore James Walker was sentenced to prison in 2012 after pleading guilty to a Chapel Hill attack in which he pepper-sprayed an 18-year-old University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student and dragged her toward a car before two brothers intervened.

The student was jogging along Columbia Street on May 12, 2010, when a man sprayed her with pepper spray and dragged her toward a car parked in a lot on Rosemary Street, according to Chapel Hill police. Joey and Freddie Shelton heard the woman screaming as they drove by and stopped to intervene, and she was released unharmed.

As the attacker fled the scene, he struck Joey Shelton with his car. Prosecutors said Shelton was left with a permanent back injury and lingering pain in his knees and wrists.

Police arrested Theodore James Walker, then 26, of Chapel Hill, and charged him with second-degree kidnapping, assault on a female and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. He was held on a $5 million bond. A search warrant later showed jailers found clothes, credit cards, condoms and a makeup compact in Walker's possession at booking, along with letters bearing women's names and details of a possible break-in. Investigators said they also found a loaded shotgun wrapped in a towel and a baseball bat in his car.

Walker was separately charged with felony hit-and-run in an April 2010 case in Pitt County, in which a 20-year-old woman was hurt. He told investigators she jumped from his moving car while trying to grab his keys. That case was still pending as of 2012.

Walker pleaded guilty in February 2012 to the Chapel Hill charges. His attorney asked the court to consider probation with mental health treatment, citing a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and testimony that Walker had responded well to medication. Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall opposed his release, telling the court the victim was still enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill and had at least another year on campus.

Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour sentenced Walker on June 13, 2012, to 25 to 39 months in prison on the kidnapping charge, plus a second 25- to 39-month term on the deadly weapon charge split so that nine months would be served before five years of probation with required mental health treatment. "I'm just grateful that I'm still here and grateful that I was able to help out," Shelton said after the sentencing. Walker had already spent about 25 months in jail awaiting trial, and prosecutors said he would likely be released within 19 to 20 months of the hearing.