A four-year-old girl that had been the subject of an Amber Alert has been found safe just a short distance away from her North York home.
The child was in a car seat in the back of a black 2008 Toyota Camry that had been left running outside a home on Romanway Crescent near Jane Street and Lawrence Avenue Friday morning when it was taken by an unknown culprit or culprits at around 6 a.m.
The theft prompted a frantic search, which eventually came to a conclusion when the vehicle was found abandoned in a parking lot by a member of the public sometime around 9:30 a.m. The girl was inside the vehicle when it was recovered and is in “good health,” according to a family spokesperson.
She was reunited with her family at around 10 a.m. after being checked out by paramedics as a precaution.
CP24’s camera captured the emotional moment as the girl high-fived a police officer and was then lifted up by her father and taken into an awaiting police vehicle.
“The family is relieved and in good spirits,” family spokesperson Tony Lam told reporters outside the Romanway Crescent home. “Christina is in good health. We just want to give a special thank you to everyone on social media for sharing the story and helping us find her. We’d like to request privacy for the family and give them an opportunity to recover from this traumatic situation.”
The girl, identified as Christina Nguyen, ended up being missing for about three-and-a-half hours.
Though the temperatures were well below zero when she was abandoned, she was OK because the culprit or culprits left the vehicle running.
Police say they continue to believe the incident resulted from a vehicle theft gone bad and was not intended as an abduction.
“The child was placed in a running car in the driveway of the parents’ home and it seems like it was a crime of opportunity, where the suspect got in the car, saw that it was running and drove away,” Det. Ranbir Dhillon told reporters earlier on Friday morning.
Dhillon said that the girl’s parents had left her in the car for less than 10 minutes while they went back into their house to retrieve another child.
When they returned, the car was gone along with their daughter.
Throughout the morning police responded to numerous reported sightings of the vehicle throughout the Greater Toronto Area but Dhillon said that it was ultimately found in a parking lot “not too far away” from the girl’s home.
He said the incident should be a cautionary tale for all parents.
“Do not leave your children in your car, especially when they are this young. Just don’t leave your child in a car alone. Ever.”
Dhillon likened the recovery of the car to finding a “needle in a haystack” and credited the assistance of police from a number of divisions and agencies with helping to bring about a quick resolution to the case.
He said that an investigation will now commence, with forensic officers dusting the vehicle for fingerprints and searching for other evidence as they look to identify the party or parties responsible.
