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A "serious breach" delayed a Volkswagen car tracking service during an incident in which a vehicle was stolen with a toddler inside, the Lake County Illinois Sheriff's Office announced in a Facebook post.
A 34-year-old woman returned to her Libertyville home just after 3:30 p.m. on Thursday (February 23) and had taken one child into their home before coming back to get her 2-year-old son, who was still inside her 2021 Volkswagen Atlas at the time. A man exited a white BMW driven by another person and knocked the woman to the ground as she attempted to protect her son before driving off in the Atlas with the toddler still inside, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
The carjacker and the BMW driver both fled the scene, with one of them running over the woman, who is six months pregnant, and caused her to experience "serious injuries to her extremities," according to the sheriff's office via NBC Chicago. Authorities contacted Volkswagen Car-Net, a service that allows owners to track their vehicles, in an effort to locate the child and car, but the company "would not track the vehicle with the abducted child until they received payment to reactivate the tracking device in the stolen Volkswagen," the sheriff's office said.
A Volkswagen spokesperson issued a statement to NBC News claiming the company “takes the safety and security of its customers very seriously.”
“Volkswagen has a procedure in place with a third-party provider for Car-Net Support Services involving emergency requests from law enforcement. They have executed this process successfully in previous incidents. Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of the process. We are addressing the situation with the parties involved,” the statement said.
Authorities located the child on Lakeside Drive in Waukegan, about 10 miles northeast of Libertyville, after a person at a nearby business called 911. The witness told police that they saw two cars enter the parking lot and one driver abandon the child before the vehicles fled the scene.
It wasn't immediately clear how long it took police to locate the child at the time of NBC News' report. Authorities located the stolen Volkswagen Atlas in a parking lot near Casimir Pulaski Drive and Route 43 in Waukegan, according to the sheriff's office.
The mother of the child is reported to be hospitalized in serious but stable condition. Police are continuing to search for the BMW suspect vehicle, which as reported to be stolen from a car dealership in Waukegan within a week prior to the incident involving the toddler.