California police have arrested a man who stole a car with a one-year-old boy inside. While leaving the parking lot, the thief hit another vehicle. The driver of the damaged car gave chase to the fugitive and alerted the police.
Los Angeles police officers were notified Tuesday afternoon that a car had been stolen from the parking lot of a Starbucks coffee shop near the intersection of Woodman Avenue and Sherman Way in Los Angeles. Inside was a one-year-old boy.
Mother got out to take the order
As the father of the kidnapped child, Gustavo Flores, later told reporters, his wife got out of the car for a moment to pick up an order from Starbucks when the unknown man pushed her, jumped into her car and drove off. – [Dziecko] was sleeping. I was stupid to leave for a second. He jumped in the car and ran away with the child in the car,” said Laurina Esposito. She says she chased the man but was unable to stop him.
While leaving the parking lot, the suspect, 25-year-old Jessie Lopez, crashed into another car. The person behind the wheel gave chase to read the license plate and called the police. Soon after, officers located the stolen vehicle nearly a mile from the abduction site, near Woodman Avenue and Saticoy Street in Van Nuys, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. They also found a kidnapped child there. A one-year-old boy (whose age is incorrectly given by some media as four years – ed.) escaped the incident unscathed.
The child’s father wanted to beat the suspect
A child theft and abduction suspect was found in an apartment block nearby. Shortly after the intervention, the child’s father arrived on the scene. He wanted to pounce on the suspect, but was stopped by the officers. “Honestly, I tried to hit him,” he admitted. When asked by a WRC-TV journalist if he knew there was a child in the car, Lopez declined to say.
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