BOWIE, Md. — A 5-year-old was found safe Tuesday evening after a car was stolen with the child inside in Prince George's County, police said.
At 6:15 p.m., a vehicle was stolen from outside a business on Watkins Park Drive in the Kettering/Upper Marlboro area, the Prince George's County Police Department said. The 5-year-old was inside at the time of the theft.
An hour later, a child was found inside a business in the 10200 block of Lake Arbor Way in Bowie. It was the child who was taken in the car theft.
Police have since reunited the child with his mother.
The stolen vehicle, described as a 2018 white Mercedes GLC, has not been found.
Police have not released any details on how the theft happened, nor the make or model of the vehicle they're looking for.
No other information has been released.
WUSA9 spoke to a man who works at Levi's Restaurant where the child was found. Willie J. Martin said a customer brought in the child who was found wandering out front.
Martin took in the child and he and two others from nearby businesses went up and down the row of stores in the strip mall looking for his mother, thinking the child had wandered away from his mother in the area.
When they couldn't locate the child's guardian, they called 911. They reported finding the child and became aware the child was from the car theft.
"A customer brought this little boy inside the store and said he got misplaced from his mom. I didn't know what to do, so I thought maybe she was in one of the stores here," Martin said. "So I went all the way down to the day care center, then the girls from the beauty salon came out, and they went that way trying to find the mother. And we couldn't find the mother ... so I just decided to call the police."
Martin wasn't surprised to hear that the boy had been taken in a car that was stolen.
"It's been happening so often all over the DMV. People don't care who's in the car – they want the car. But I'm just glad they dropped the little boy off."
