On an oppressively hot afternoon, a Florida teenager was startled to see what someone had ditched at the foot of his neighbor’s driveway: a child’s car seat with a 21-month-old boy still strapped inside.
It was lucky that Jamichal Young, 16, found the missing child when he did with temperatures already well into the 90s and the sun blazing. Jamichal videotaped the child on the driveway with his phone and quickly called 911, while his family gave the toddler some juice and a fresh diaper and posted the video on social media to help find his parents. Broward County sheriff’s deputies and the child’s grateful, crying foster mom arrived quickly.
What happened that hot summer day in a neighborhood near Ft. Lauderdale is just one example of a frightening trend across the country: Car thieves are stealing cars in record numbers, and a growing number are startled to realize at some point that they haven’t just stolen a car but also a child, sometimes more than one.
Babies and small children are being abducted – 162 children last year and 63 so far this year, according to Kids and Car Safety – when they’re left alone in the backseats of vehicles while their parents hop out for just a minute to pump gas, pick up take-out food or dash back into their homes for something.
When car thieves realize there’s a baby on board, they often panic and get rid of the child or abandon the car with the baby in it, like the child in Florida. But recently, the trend has taken a deadly, tragic turn.
On July 11, a 29-year-old Columbus, Ohio, mother was fatally struck by her own car as she jumped on the hood and tried to stop a car thief from driving away with her sleeping 6-year-old inside. Alexa Stakely had just picked up her son from the babysitter’s home and left the car running while she dashed back inside to retrieve something. When she returned to her car, she saw it beginning to back out of the driveway and jumped on the hood. The suspect began driving erratically, throwing her onto the roadway. She died of head injuries the next day.
