Atlanta, Georgia, police are speaking out after a car was stolen in December 2025 while still running and left unattended. This wasn’t just any car theft, though: According to the Atlanta PD (APD) in a post on social media, an 8-year-old girl was asleep inside the vehicle. Now, the APD is calling on parents not to make the same mistake.
What police saw when they recovered the vehicle
On December 16, 2025, the mother in the case left her engine running while she briefly entered a store, and her daughter slept in the vehicle. The car was recovered that same day, abandoned, with her daughter safely inside, wrapped in her pink blanket.
In the body cam shooting that the APD shared, captioned Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare an officer says, “She’s about eight years old. She just woke up. The car’s occupied just with her inside.”
The girl’s mother arrives at the scene and tells police she went into the store for only a minute, and she could see her car through the store windows, so she thought it was safe to leave her daughter asleep inside. But when she exited, her car was nowhere to be found, and she called the police.
One comment on the APD post noted in part, “It only takes a minute for a thief to [steal] your car and everything that’s in it, please stop leaving your kids in the car for a second.”
Atlanta PD spokesperson Sergeant Tasheena Brown adds in the post, “I want to talk to you about a serious and preventable issue, leaving young children unattended inside running vehicles.” Even if you’re only stepping away for a moment, she adds, “a running vehicle can quickly become an easy target for thieves.”
Brown says she understands life as a parent can get busy. “But those moments matter,” she says. “If you need to step away from your car, turn it off, take your keys, and take your child with you every time.”
The Florida car incident involving a child
Meanwhile, the Atlanta incident is the second similar case involving a child left in a car in recent months. The other case involved a tow truck driver.
In December 2025, in Sunrise, Florida, a 34-year-old tow truck driver, Sergio Jesus Suarez, was arrested after he allegedly towed a parked car with a 4-year-old girl still inside. Surveillance and bystander videos show Suarez hooking up the vehicle and driving off while the child’s father frantically ran behind him, yelling that his daughter was in the car.
According to police reports, the young girl fell out of the car onto the road during the tow and suffered minor injuries; she was taken to a hospital for evaluation. Suarez was charged with child neglect without great bodily harm, a felony, and later posted bond and was released. In court, a judge noted the driver failed to check the vehicle for occupants before towing
