Thieves Steal a Car with an 8-Year-Old Boy Inwards, Drop Him Off at School
Posted on November Nineteen, two thousand fifteen at 9:50am EDT
A pair of car thieves dropped a boy off at school after finding him in the backseat of a vehicle they’d stolen in Norfolk, Virginia, on Wednesday morning.
The boy’s mother called police at just after eight a.m. when she discovered her car was missing. “The mom ran into work to take care of a few things and left the car running with the music on,” Norfolk police spokeswoman Melinda Wray tells PEOPLE. “Evidently, this was something she did regularly and had never had any problems.”
The mother was gone for about twenty minutes, and when she returned her car – and her 8-year-old son – were missing.
“All of our officers began looking for the car and this little boy,” says Wray. They found him just a little while later, “sitting in class as if nothing had happened,” she adds.
When police interviewed the boy, he exposed that two fellows he didn’t know had gotten into the car with him and told him they were supposed to take him to school. “They said his mom had told them to drive him to school,” says Wray. “It was slightly odd to him. He was jumpy because he had never seen these fellows before.”
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But the two fellows drove him straight to Ghent Elementary School and dropped him off without issue. “The child, after he learned the true details of what happened, he was obviously shaken. But the boys were not attempting to abduct him,” says Wray. “They were just attempting to steal the vehicle.”
She adds: “Evidently we have a duo classy criminals.”
The vehicle itself was located later on Wednesday, parked about three miles away from the school. Investigators have not formally charged anyone with any crimes, but Wray says they have a few leads, thanks in large part to the boy’s description of the studs. She expects someone will be charged within the next week.
In addition, the boy’s mother may face criminal charges of her own for leaving her son alone. Says Wray, “Obviously, child neglect is something that investigators are looking into.”