James Norman, his daughter said, “truly was like a cat.”
“He had so many lives: fell off a roof, fell off a ladder, crashed his car,” Nicole Lauritsen said. “He was training somebody (to fly) and the engine went out and they landed upside down in Lake Mathews.”
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But Norman, a strong and stubborn 79-year-old Army veteran and former construction worker and truck driver, had grown frail in the past year and was using a cane to walk, Lauritsen said. And so he could offer no resistance on Monday, May 12, when, as he was vacuuming the back seat of his SUV at a Norco gas station, a carjacker entered his vehicle and drove off, the door slamming almost shut and trapping Norman halfway in and halfway out.
Norman died when he fell out less than a half-mile later onto Hidden Valley Parkway.
The man charged with crimes in the case, 29-year-old Ryan Hewitt of Corona, was apprehended that day when Riverside County sheriff’s deputies found the SUV in Riverside after Lauritsen alerted them to the location using a tracking device she had placed in the vehicle because of her father’s failing heart.
Brett Lauritsen, left, and his wife Nicole talk on May 13, 2025, about the life of her father, James Norman, who died the previous day. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said Norman fell out of his SUV in Corona after it was carjacked as he cleaned it at a gas station in Norco. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
Hewitt on Wednesday was scheduled to enter pleas in Superior Court in Riverside to charges of murder, carjacking, elder abuse and hit and run causing injury or death. The arraignment, however, was postponed to May 27. Hewitt remained in custody.
“He didn’t deserve to die the way he died,” Lauritsen said. “He was left for roadkill.”
Lauritsen and her husband, Brett, talked about Norman’s life in front of his Corona home on Tuesday. They asked that the weed-filled dirt yard and the house, with its peeling paint, not be photographed because Norman had too much pride for others to know that he could no longer keep up the place.
James Norman eats at home as his dog watches in an undated family photo. Norman, a 79-year-old Corona resident, died on May 12, 2025, when his SUV was carjacked as he cleaned the back seat at a Norco gas station. Norman fell onto the roadway a short time later. (Courtesy of Nicole Lauritsen)
Norman was separated and lived alone.
“He had a hard time letting go that he was an old man,” his daughter said.
“Just recently, Brett Lauritsen added, “He’s like, ‘I’m going to price lumber. We need to build a new patio back here.’ I’m like, ‘We’re not going to build a new patio.’ “
But that’s exactly what would have happened in Norman’s younger days. Brett Lauritsen said his father-in-law was responsible for construction projects at their Fontana home and at the homes of many of his Corona neighbors.
Norman worked hard to support his family and was a good father in other ways, his daughter said.
“He was the dad who took us fishing, hunting and camping,” she said. “During the middle of the night at Girl Scout camp, when I was crying to come home, he was the one who drove up the mountains to drive me home.”
Ryan Hewitt, 29, from Corona, sits in court at the Riverside County Hall of Justice in downtown Riverside on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Hewitt is charged with the murder, carjacking, elder abuse and hit and run causing injury or death to 79-year-old James Norman. Norman was hanging out of the back seat as Hewitt drove away, authorities said, and Norman died when he fell out on Hidden Valley Parkway. Hewitt did not enter a plea and is being held without bail. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The Lauritsens were planning to meet Norman for dinner Monday night. But they got a call around 12:30 p.m. that Norman had been in a traffic accident and that deputies couldn’t find his car. The Lauritsens supplied the tracking information and went to the area of Magnolia Avenue and Polk Street, next to Kaiser Permanente.
There, deputies told them to leave because undercover officers were watching the abandoned SUV, Nicole Lauritsen said. That’s when Hewitt was arrested.
Lauritsen said investigators told her that Hewitt had been dropped off at the ARCO gas station in Norco and needed a way to get to Riverside to buy illegal drugs.
The Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on her statement.
Hewitt has no previous documented criminal record in Riverside County.
The family is now raising money for a private memorial.
“Death is OK,” Nicole Lauritsen said. “I’m struggling with the vision of how he went down. I imagine he was so scared.”