Couple sentenced in stabbing, carjacking of DoorDash driver who offered their family a ride near Sequim

A couple is headed to prison in connection with the stabbing and carjacking of DoorDash driver Melvin Swagerty after he stopped to help their family near Sequim last year.

Nicholas Well, 31, was sentenced to 19 years and three months for attempted second-degree murder and first-degree robbery. Rosario Lopez Castro, 29, was sentenced to five years for second-degree assault.

“The hardest part for me is that I still do not understand why,” Swagerty said in a statement read by a crime victim advocate, according to The Sequim Gazette. “I did not know these people. I had never met them before. I was not trying to gain anything. I simply saw children standing beside a highway in the cold and chose to help. For that act of kindness, I was nearly murdered. I survived an attack that should have taken my life.”

DoorDash driver attacked after offering family a ride

Swagerty was delivering for DoorDash when he saw a family walking along Highway 101 near Sequim on Oct. 19, 2025. Deputies said he stopped to help and gave the family a ride. Within minutes, witnesses in a car behind them saw a struggle inside the vehicle, then saw Swagerty fall from the driver’s side door.

“All he knows was he stopped to pick up this family with the kids, and then he was beaten up and stabbed, and they stole his car,” Clallam County Undersheriff Lorraine Shore said. “He had suffered a wound to his neck. We don’t know if he was stabbed or his neck sliced, but, yeah, it was quite a lot of blood.”

Deputies identified the family as Port Angeles residents. The pair had been contacted twice earlier that day: once during a disturbance in Sequim, and later when the father was arrested for reckless driving in Port Angeles before being released.

Swagerty’s car was entered into law enforcement databases as stolen.

Deputies found 7 children inside stolen car

Early the next morning, the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office reported locating the vehicle on a county roadway. Deputies found it parked in the middle of the road with its lights off. A significant amount of blood was found in the driver’s seat area, and a bloody knife was recovered from the father’s pocket.

Kitsap County prosecutors said deputies found the couple passed out in the stolen car with their seven children inside.

“Two of them are just sitting on their parents’ laps,” prosecutors said in court last year. “The other five are crammed in the back seat. There’s no car seats. The children weren’t properly clothed. Some of them were just in diapers. Didn’t have shoes on.”

The seven children, who ranged in age from six months to nine years, were taken into protective custody.

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