FORT WORTH, Texas — The Fort Worth Police Department released body camera footage Wednesday afternoon of two officers rescuing a baby who had been kidnapped and then abandoned in a ravine.
Footage shows the two officers on Monday night rushing to the baby, who was left behind in a car seat and was crying when he was picked up by one of the officers and taken back with them.
"We have the baby," one of the officers could be heard saying, while another officer worked to comfort the baby.
Police said the officer depicted in the video rescuing the baby was Sgt. Ronnie Chau.
Police said officers initially responded to the kidnapping call at about 7 p.m. Monday in the 3300 block of North Pecan Street in North Fort Worth's Diamond Hill neighborhood. Officers were told an unknown man had jumped into the mother's car and drove off with her 6-month old baby still inside.
The baby's uncle told WFAA that his sister-in-law, the child's mother, had ran inside the home to drop something off. "Just for a minute or two," the uncle said in Spanish. "We went outside and the car was gone."
Several more officers responded to help search for the vehicle from various other units, police said. After more than an hour since the initial call, officers found the stolen car on Deen Street and arrested the suspect, but the baby was not inside the car.
After gathering information from the suspect and checking the area, officers found the baby in the car seat in a ravine nearby.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Chau said the suspect guided him to the baby.
"[The baby was] hanging on by the straps of the car seat at that time, barely hanging on and his little foot was in the dirt area," Chau said.
The baby appeared to be uninjured, police said, and was reunited with a parent.
The baby was crying at the time, but Chau said, "that was a good cry, a joyful cry, joyful for me."
Police arrested the suspect, later identified as Elliot Reyes, on charges of kidnapping, abandoning/endangering a child and auto theft.
"I think if we wouldn't have found [the baby] that night... I don't know what would've happened," the baby's uncle said.
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