BALTIMORE _ An 11-month-old baby boy who was inside a vehicle that was carjacked Wednesday afternoon in Southeast Baltimore was found several hours later.
The incident prompted Maryland State Police to issue an Amber Alert at about 3 p.m. local time. The infant's mother told police she was unloading groceries around 1:30 p.m. but left her car running. An unknown suspect jumped into the car and drove off with the baby still inside.
The boy was found before 3:45 p.m. on a sidewalk in front of a house in Northeast Baltimore's Belair-Edison neighborhood. Police said the child appeared unharmed but was taken to a hospital for a precautionary evaluation.
The vehicle, a 2009 Suzuki SUV, was not located at the scene and police were searching for the suspects.
A 15-year-old boy was walking home from school in Northeast Baltimore when he encountered a baby left alone outside in front of a house, crying and screaming, the teen's aunt said.
The teen and a woman who had been walking by at the same time called police. The older woman picked up the baby to comfort it, said Edwina Garnett, the aunt of the teen. She said she stayed on the phone with her hysterical nephew until the police arrived.
"My nephew felt really bad, he said it's cold out here with the baby," Garnett said. "Soon after that I received the Amber Alert on my phone, and then found out that it was the baby that was missing. He was pretty relieved just to know that the baby was OK."
At the scene, a red baby carrier sat at the bottom of the front stoop of a brick row house. A baby could be heard crying from the back of an ambulance.
The incident recalled a similar scare in April, when a 4-year-old girl was inside a vehicle stolen in Southeast Baltimore. The child was later found left on a sidewalk, with the car also dumped nearby.
Police at the time charged Charles Johnson, 28, with armed carjacking and various other crimes. But records show all charges against Johnson were dropped in June, about a month after he was indicted.
Johnson's attorney, John Hassett, said Wednesday that he located surveillance video and cash register receipts showing that Johnson was in Dundalk at the time of the carjacking, and presented them to prosecutors.
"The city state's attorney's office really did step up and took correct action right away," Hassett said.
In another incident in November 2015, a woman was charged with falsely reporting to police that her child was inside her vehicle when it was stolen in West Baltimore. Police later said her child was not inside the vehicle and she had lied to speed up the search for her stolen car. Records show one count of giving a false statement to police was dropped by prosecutors two months later.
