Police say a 'trackable' toy helped lead them to the stolen SUV with the 4-year-old still inside
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A 4-year-old boy is back with his mother after what police are calling an "unintentional" kidnapping when a thief stole an SUV with the child still inside.
Police have also released a video that appears to show the driver walking away after ditching the vehicle.
It happened around midnight on Tuesday in the 3000 block of West Susquehanna Avenue in Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion section.
Police said this all started when the mom went into a relative's house to grab a phone.
She said she left her 2018 Toyota RAV 4 running with her son sleeping in the backseat and was only away for a few minutes when a thief took off with her vehicle.
Police said they believe this was a crime of opportunity and that the suspect made a split-second decision to steal it.
Police tell Action News they were able to follow a "trackable" toy to find the child, who was still in the backseat of an SUV when it was stolen.
"One of his toys was actually trackable, so we had a family member on the phone who was able to track the vehicle," said Chief Inspector Scott Small with the Philadelphia Police Department.
Fortunately, the child was found safe after a police helicopter spotted the vehicle about a mile away.
The vehicle and child were found in the 2900 block of West Flora Street in the city's Brewerytown section.
"We believe that once they realized that there was a 4-year-old child asleep in the back, they immediately pulled the vehicle over at 29th and Flora, and got out of the vehicle," Small said. "We've had instances like this in the past. We get a couple of these a year."
Surveillance video shows the suspect getting out of the SUV and walking down the sidewalk toward Girard Avenue at a normal pace.
The person is carrying a bag and has their face covered, and eventually walks out of the frame.
The video then shows a patrol vehicle nearly 40 minutes later. It makes a U-turn on 29th Street and pulls behind the SUV.
You can then see that the first thing the responding officer does is open the back door to check on the boy, who was still sleeping in the backseat.
In this latest situation, investigators said they're checking the SUV for fingerprints and DNA to try to identify the person who bailed out of the vehicle.
The good thing is that the 4-year-old was not harmed.
"Mother and child are reunited," Small said. "The child is fine, with no injuries. We don't know if the child knows what happened because the child is still sleeping right now."
Police said this was technically a kidnapping even though it may not have been intentional, so now special victims' detectives are working the case.