Baby in carjacked vehicle is found abandoned on porch of home, Nebraska cops say
Three children, including a baby, were rescued after a running vehicle they were in was stolen, Nebraska police say.
The vehicle with the 5-year-old, 1-year-old and 7-month-old was taken outside a home in Grand Island around 3 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 29, according to a report by the Grand Island Police Department.
Police said the children’s parents put the kids in the running car and had a “brief conversation” with their neighbors, when two suspects took the vehicle.
The stolen vehicle was found about an hour later. Police apprehended an 18-year-old and 17-year-old in the vehicle, but the three children were not inside, police said in a felony report.
At 4:52 a.m., nearly two hours after the incident began, officers discovered a different stolen vehicle in Grand Island. The two older children were found in the truck, but the baby remained missing, police said.
The baby, police learned a half hour later, had been abandoned and wrapped in only a blanket on the front porch of a home.
Police said the 18-year-old admitted to stealing the vehicle the three children were in. When he realized the kids were inside of it, he met with the 17-year-old who was driving the stolen truck, the felony report states.
They abandoned the two older kids in the truck and dropped off the baby on a random porch. The teenage suspects “fled at a high rate of speed” in the stolen vehicle before being caught in a pursuit, police said.
The two teenagers were charged with three counts of kidnapping, three counts of intentional child abuse resulting in injury, theft and flight to avoid arrest, Grand Island police said.
The three children were taken to a hospital for medical treatment because of “dangerously cold” weather conditions, police said. They were treated for “suspected hypothermia and frostbite” and have since been released, KLKN reported.
Officers found “no negligent behavior on behalf of the parents.”
“The safety of our community, and the most vulnerable of them, our children, was the foremost consideration throughout this case, and we are thankful the outcome was not worse given the circumstances caused by the suspects,” police said.
Grand Island is about 150 miles southwest of Omaha.
Two juveniles took car with 4-year-old inside, then crashed it during chase, CMPD says
Woman leaps from stolen car being chased by police before deadly crash, AR cops say
Young teens kidnap woman while stealing SUV outside Walmart, Pennsylvania police say
