Witnesses: Tow Truck Operator Took Vehicle From Chatham Parking Lot With Child Inside

A woman has been reunited with her child after a tow truck operator towed her vehicle away with the child sitting inside.

According to witnesses, the woman had gone inside a liquor store in the 200 block of West 87^th Street on Thursday evening, leaving her child inside of the car. Before the woman went inside, she asked two women to keep an eye on her child while she went into the store, but according to those women, it only took seconds for things to quickly take a turn for the terrifying.

In the time the woman was inside the store, a tow truck operator had hitched up the car and began to drive away with it.

“She came out screaming ‘there’s a baby in my car!”,” Antoine Hoaoman, a security guard at the store, said. “It’s just terrible. She came running back. She ran back without shoes on and ran out to that car for her baby.”

The two women who were watching the child took cell phone video of the incident.

“She chased him through the parking lot, saying ‘my baby! My baby!,” one of the women said. “He just kept going.”

A witness to the scene called police, but not before the tow truck operator had already left the scene with the child still inside the car.

The women chased after the tow truck, saying that the operator was driving at a high rate of speed on the Dan Ryan Expressway as they chased him in their car. The women kept their cell phone camera rolling to capture the dramatic scene.

“He was going really fast on the expressway with the baby in the car,” one of the women said.

Eventually the tow truck stopped near 95^th Street, and after a lengthy argument with the operator, he finally released the car and allowed the women to get the child out of the car.

“He gave her the car back because he knew he was wrong,” one of the women said.

Audio from 911 calls indicated that the tow truck operator called police, saying that there was “a baby inside the vehicle.”

NBC 5 called the company who operates the towing operation for the parking lot, but the woman who answered the call adamantly denied that the company had towed a vehicle with a child inside.