For about 20 minutes, Dan Brown was living a nightmare.
The 27-year-old had stopped by a co-worker's midtown home late Wednesday morning to pick up a drill to fix his motorcycle's alternator.
When he walked back outside, his Chevy Blazer, which he had left running, was gone. So too was his 2-year-old son, Cameron, who was sitting in a child seat inside the Blazer.
Brown's friend, Graham Baird, said he thought Brown had been in his house near 45th and Mason Streets for “no more than 10 minutes.” When the two walked out, Baird said, Brown asked him if the Blazer could have rolled away.
“At first I thought he was trying to pull one over on me,” Baird said. “I saw the panicked look on his face, and I knew he wasn't.”
The two looked up and down the street and realized the Blazer was gone.
Baird, who works with Brown at PayPal, said he got into his vehicle and drove east down Leavenworth, then down to 24th Street, looking for the white four-door Blazer with blue stripes down the side. Brown stayed in front of the house and called 911.
A maroon 10-speed bicycle had been left on the side of the road in front of Baird's house. Police said the thief may have been riding the bike before taking Brown's SUV.
A few blocks away, near 43rd and Mayberry Streets, a 53-year-old woman heard a scraping sound, which she assumed was her weekly garbage collection.
The scraping continued, and the woman realized it wasn't the garbageman.
She looked outside and a saw a man she estimated to be between 18 and 22 years old struggling to remove a car seat — with a little boy still strapped in — out of a white SUV.
“He looked scared,” the woman said of the young man.
The man got the car seat out of the SUV and left it on the side of the road, the woman said. The man then drove off east down Mayberry Street.
The woman, who spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name, Karen, ran out to the boy.
“My thoughts weren't really focused,” she said. “I just knew I had to call police.”
Karen dialed 911 and relayed her find to emergency dispatchers: a little boy wearing camouflage shorts and orange flip-flops.
She took the boy inside and gave him a lollipop.
Karen said the boy didn't talk, but he wasn't crying, either.
“He acted like he knew me and this was the place he wanted to be. It was great,” she said.
About 15 minutes later, police picked up Cameron from Karen's house and brought him back to Baird's house.
Baird said Dan Brown was talking to officers when the other officers returned with Cameron. Baird nudged his friend and indicated that Cameron was back. Brown went to the boy and started crying, Baird said.
The boy's mother arrived later and held the boy.
On Thursday morning, less than 24 hours later, the SUV was found near 37th and Brown Streets, where the driver crashed and high-centered the vehicle on a dirt berm. The driver fled on foot, and police and the K-9 unit pursued him until the dogs lost his scent..
A similar incident occurred in the area in 2002, when a man stole a Jeep from in front of a Council Bluffs convenience store with a 9-month-old girl inside. The Jeep's driver had left the vehicle unlocked and idling when she went in to pay for gas. The child was found in the Jeep, unharmed, about two hours later in Omaha.
Officer Jacob Bettin, an Omaha police spokesman, said Wednesday's incident is just one of many reasons people should not leave children in a running vehicle.
Bettin said kids can get out of their seats, crawl into the driver's seat and put the vehicle in gear. Or they might lock themselves inside. A lot can go wrong, he said.
Officials didn't know Wednesday afternoon whether Brown would be cited in connection with the incident. The Blazer had not been found, and no arrests had been made.
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