PUYALLUP, Wash. — Deputies are searching for a man who stole a car with a 16-month-old girl inside, then abandoned the vehicle a few blocks away, apparently after he saw the baby in the back seat.
Chopper 7 video showed the child and mother being reunited a short time later, the baby apparently having slept through the entire episode.
The child's mother told police that she left her car running with the sleeping toddler inside when she went to drop another child off at KinderCare at 152nd Street East and Meridian Avenue East in the Puyallup area. When she returned, the car was gone.
"(It was) hell, torture. I mean, let someone take your kid for 11 minutes," Kayla Hill said. "I ran in for maybe 10 seconds, walked for the car to the door, (then) someone peeled out in my car and took my daughter with them."
The girl has a spinal condition, is sick with the flu and Hill didn't want to wake her, she told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Kevin McCarty. They were on their way to therapy when the car was stolen, she said.
"In the short amount of time she was inside, the car was taken, the thief drove away and drove to that spot (at 151st and 110th Avenue ) … where he abandoned it," said McCarty during live coverage at noon.
The thief hid in some bushes about a half a block away, a witness told deputies. The man then got his cellphone out and called for a ride, the witness said.
"Moments later, a red car pulled up. The suspect got into that car and took off with someone else and fled the scene," McCarty said.
Deputies are looking for a white man in his 20s, possibly scruffy, wearing a green coat with a camouflaged backpack. He was picked up in a red car with a "boxy" back end.
Crimestoppers of Tacoma/Pierce County is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the man's arrest and the filing of charges.
"I'm so happy that the baby's OK," said Lauryn Murdoch, a neighbor.