Atlanta police apprehended a suspect and rescued a 2-year-old child within 15 minutes after the child's mother's car was stolen while she was completing an Instacart delivery on July 30. The incident began around 4:36 p.m. when the mother returned to where she had parked her running vehicle to find it missing, with her daughter in the backseat.
"Someone just stole my car and it has my 2-year-old daughter in it," the mother told an Atlanta 911 dispatcher, according to audio released by police. When the dispatcher confirmed the child was in the vehicle, she reiterated, "Yes, my 2-year-old daughter was in the backseat. I was dropping off an Instacart order and I came back outside and my car is gone. My daughter was inside."
Officers from the department's Auto Crimes Enforcement Unit utilized the city's license plate readers to track the vehicle. The pursuit led to officers surrounding the stolen car and taking the suspect into custody.
Body camera video shows officers approaching the vehicle, ordering the driver to show his hands and exit the car. The suspect, identified as 21-year-old Saleem Martin, was then handcuffed. As officers secured Martin, the child could be heard crying nearby, and her mother was heard comforting her. "The child is okay. The child's okay," an officer reported over the radio shortly after.
Martin faces charges including kidnapping, theft by taking, simple battery, entering an automobile, cruelty to children, and criminal attempt to commit a felony. Authorities stated the toddler was unharmed and reunited with her parents.
An arrest warrant obtained by 11Alive, an Atlanta NBC affiliate, indicated the child's mother later observed that the bottom of her daughter's dress was unbuttoned. The toddler allegedly told her mother that "the man did it," referring to Martin.
According to the warrant, Martin's hands were on the child's torso when officers found him, and he was attempting to hide between the seats. He reportedly told investigators he was trying to calm the child and that he did not realize she was in the backseat until after he had driven away. He also claimed he was trying to reach New Jersey and discarded an iPad from the vehicle because he believed it could be used to track him.
The Atlanta Police Department's Special Victims Unit was involved in the investigation.