A 4-year-old girl was in the back seat of a vehicle when it was stolen early Thursday morning, police in Illinois said. The vehicle was shortly located nearby, though the girl, Blessing Aoci, remains missing, police said.
The abduction was reported at approximately 6:07 a.m. in Rock Island, police said. The vehicle had been left running with Blessing inside while her mother went inside a residence when it was stolen by an unknown suspect, according to Illinois State Police.
The vehicle was recovered nearly 20 minutes later, at approximately 6:24 a.m., less than a mile away, though the child was not inside, police said. Three booster seats that had been in the back seat were also missing, according to Rock Island Police Chief Timothy McCloud.
The child’s whereabouts are not known at this time and an Amber Alert has been issued. Police are conducting door-to-door canvassing and using drones amid the search, McCloud said.
McCloud said they haven’t ruled out any possibilities including this being a targeted kidnapping, but police currently believe the abduction to be “inadvertent.”
“We are hoping that there are people, even anonymously, that can give us information about where that child was taken out of the car or where that child is right now,” he said during a press briefing Thursday. “Our hope is that she’s safe inside a house nearby in the neighborhoods, and that’s why we’re going door-to-door with her picture.”
McCloud said the incident “happened in seconds.”
“That’s what we try to tell people, that you can take one child and put them in the car and then go back to the house to get another child, and in the meantime, that car’s gone,” he said. “It’s that fast.”
Blessing is Black, 3 feet tall and weighs 50 pounds, police said. She was wearing a pink jacket, pink boots and blue pants at the time she went missing, police said.
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