A man driving a white Nissan Altima was being sought Thursday evening after a missing 2-year-old girl, who disappeared from a self-service car wash in Gardena earlier in the afternoon, was located miles away in Cudahy.
The girl was last seen around 4:55 p.m. at the intersection of 149th Street and Western, according to the Gardena Police Department. The original missing child alert from police misspelled the girl’s first name. The toddler was no longer being identified by name or image Friday at the request of Gardena police, who said she was injured but did not specify how she was hurt.
Her mother told police she heard the toddler scream, but when she turned around her daughter was gone.
The girl was believed to have been abducted from the car wash by a man driving a Nissan Altima, Gardena police Chief Ed Medrano said at a news conference Thursday evening.
A security camera at a near by restaurant captured an image of the car going down an alley behind the car wash at about the same time the girl was taken.
“The time sequence puts it very close to the time she went missing,” Medrano said.
The child was dropped off hours later by her abductor in Cudahy near the intersection of Atlantic Street and Santa Ana Avenue, Medrano said.
The girl was taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood to be examined.
Police were still interviewing witnesses who saw the girl being dropped off by the driver of the Altima, which was described as a 2008 to 2012 four-door model.
The girl’s disappearance triggered a massive neighborhood search.
Police with flyers went door-to-door in the neighborhood around the car wash, while officers in squad cars used their loud speakers to alert residents to the search for the child.
The girl’s mother was too distraught to speak, but family members pleaded for the girl’s safe return.
“She’s a pure little innocent baby … bring her back to us,” the girl’s aunt Grecian Alvarez said.
No information was released Thursday night regarding the girl’s condition. She has been reunited with her parents at the hospital.
Anyone with information was urged to call Gardena police at 310-217-9670.
