CLEVELAND — A 2-year-old girl was kidnapped when someone stole her mother's SUV with the child still in the back seat, then abandoned her alone on Cleveland's east side as cars passed by.
Watch the full video below:
It started just after 6 p.m. Thursday on Professor Avenue in the Tremont neighborhood.
According to police dispatch records, the mother reported that someone stole her car with her 2-year-old child inside. She had been doing Uber Eats deliveries, and the vehicle was extremely low on gas, with about 16 miles until empty.
Police rushed to the area, searching for any sign of the 2017 Jeep Cherokee and the little girl. Broadcasts went out across the city alerting officers that the vehicle had been stolen with a 2-year-old in the back seat.
Across town on Cleveland Road, a woman heard her dogs barking and looked outside and saw the little girl left to wander the sidewalk alone.
Her family's doorbell camera video captured the stolen Jeep pull over, with a burnt orange SUV appearing to follow it.
The second SUV stopped just up the block. The driver of the stolen Jeep got out, walked to the other car, then came back, reached inside and took the girl out.
The woman agreed to speak with News 5 only if her face was not shown and her name was not used. She said she worried the people who abandoned the little girl are still out there.
"I fear for the safety of not just me, my neighbors and everybody else," she said.
She described what she witnessed on her doorbell camera.
"They just threw her out of the car just like if you were throwing a McDonald's bag out of the car or a pop can," she said.
That's when she went outside, got the girl and called police.
"She wasn't talking. She was more smiling. She was kind of happy when I brought her into the home," she said.
Minutes later, officers arrived and reunited the little girl with her mother.
"You know I gave her a real big, tight hug. You know I felt for her because I said done been through this years ago," she said.
She said that years ago, someone stole her car and even pointed a gun at her child's head.
Officers found the stolen Jeep a few blocks away in East Cleveland, but it was empty.
Now this mother and grandmother hopes the thieves who stole the vehicle end up behind bars soon.
"I could be real cruel-hearted when I say this, I wouldn't have gave a f*** if both of them cars would have blew up last night with these individuals in it because no baby deserves to be treated like that," she said.
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