Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Boy, 4, safe
after kidnapping
in parents’ car
Louie Lazo Jr. was asleep
By Leila Fujimori
when the car was stolen
Star-BulletinA thief got more than he bargained for when he stole a car with a 4-year-old child asleep in the back seat.
A Kalihi man left his car running with the air conditioning on and son in the back seat to check on his wife, who was shopping at Oahu Market in Chinatown, just before noon yesterday. He returned moments later to find his son and car gone.
Louie Lazo ran around the market frantically trying to find his son, Louie Jr., while his wife called 911.
"I was crying. I didn't know what to do," said Rowena Lazo, the boy's mother. "I was wishing they would drop him on the corner someplace."
Twenty minutes later, both boy and car were found unharmed at the Liliha Burger King restaurant a few blocks away at 499 N. King St. The keys were left in the ignition.
"The boy was walking on the sidewalk and went up to a woman and grabbed her hand," said Detective Jeff Bruchal. Seeing the boy was in distress, she brought him into the restaurant and called police.
Shortly before the 4-year-old was found, a man in his 40s wearing an aloha shirt walked into the Burger King and told an employee there was a fight in the parking lot where the Lazos' red Toyota Corolla had been parked. But no fight had occurred.
"We think he said that so the boy could be found," Bruchal said. The man is a suspect in the case. He faces kidnapping and theft charges.
The detective said he has never heard of a case where a car and child were stolen. Bruchal tried to question Louie Jr. but could not determine whether the boy saw the person who drove the car. Rowena Lazo believes her son slept through the entire episode.
"They just thought it was harmless to leave the boy in the car," Bruchal said. "But it didn't take long for somebody to come along."
Lazo parked the car on Kekaulike Street near the corner of North King Street. He could see his wife from his car shopping at a produce stall 40 feet away. He left the car unattended for just a minute, he said. An employee of Ishimoto Fish Market saw the car drive away, but no one caught sight of the thief. And no one dining at Burger King noticed the person who drove the Lazos' car into the parking lot.
Rowena Lazo said her son was crying when they were reunited. But Louie Jr. appeared unscathed by the incident as he smiled and played while police searched the car for any evidence of his unwitting kidnapper.
