Hero Rescues Baby After Car Thief Takes Vehicle from Lawndale Gas Station with Child Inside

A family in Chicago is expressing immense gratitude after their baby was safely returned to them, thanks to a kind stranger. Last week, their car, with their infant inside, was stolen, and the baby was later found on the steps of a church during an extremely hot day.

Earl Abernathy said he was simply in the right place at the right time when he rescued the baby girl.

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A 36-year-old woman’s vehicle was stolen from a gas station with a baby inside on the morning of July 3 on Chicago’s West Side, Chicago police said.

The incident occurred when a woman was near her car at a gas station on South Independence Boulevard in Lawndale around 10:40 a.m. The suspect, a 38-year-old man, took the vehicle with the 7-month-old baby girl still in the back seat.

The thief later dropped the baby off at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church near Roosevelt Road and Halsted.

With no working AC in his car, Abernathy had his windows down and was on his way to work last week when the unexpected happened.

“This lady both of us had our windows down, and like, ‘Do you hear that?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, it sounds like a baby,'” Abernathy said.

During this chaotic moment, Abernathy exited his car to examine the situation and stumbled upon something unexpected. The infant, still in her car seat, had been abandoned in the 90-degree heat at St. Francis of Assisi, with the seat overturned on the church steps.

“I jumped out, so I threw the hazard, jumped out and went and got the baby,” Abernathy said. “That was my first instinct, like man you have to be the one to save the baby.”

Abernathy immediately called 911 and then took to social media hoping someone would recognized the infant.

“Don’t nobody recognized this baby?” Abernathy said in his social media video post. “Somebody done left this baby right here. They are wild as hell.”

Abernathy didn’t know the child’s family had been frantically searching for her.

Police said the 7-month old baby girl was taken when 38-year old Jeremy Ochoa allegedly stole the family car she was in when it was left running at a West Side gas station. Investigators said the suspect, who’s been charged with several felonies in connection with the crime, dumped the infant outside of the church once he realized she was in the backseat.

Authorities were able to reunite the child with her family.

“The cousin, the aunt and grandmother, reached out instantly like, ‘That’s my grandchild. That’s my cousin. That’s my niece,” Abernathy said.

Friends said this is not the first time the 33-year-old good Samaritan has stepped in to help someone in need. A few years ago, he pulled a family in a bad car wreck to safety and more recently performed CPR on his uncle who was having a medical emergency.

Abernathy, who is a counselor and an assistant basketball coach at his alma mater Sullivan House High school, a charter school for at risk kids needing a second chance, said he would do it all again.

“It just feels good to be praised, but it’s just something that I would do any day, but it feels good,” Abernathy said.

Abernathy did speak with the baby’s family and they did express their gratitude for his good deed.

ABC7 was told the baby was unharmed and is doing okay.