Chilling video purportedly shows the moment a man abducted a baby boy from an apartment in California while the child’s grandmother was unloading groceries.
According to San Jose police, the stranger, who the family has since said they do not recognise after viewing the video, entered the San Jose home at 1pm Monday and left with the three-month-old child, Brandon Cuellar.
In the surveillance footage released by the police, the man can be seen brazenly walking down the sidewalk while carrying a black baby carrier with a white blanket poking out.
“The baby was wearing a white onesie with dinosaurs on it, long sleeves, that’s who we are looking for right now,” Sgt Christian Camarillo of the San Jose Police Department said during a press conference, according to ABC 7.
The child was snatched from his apartment in what Sgt Camrillo described as a time period that lasted no more than a couple minutes, as the boy’s grandmother had just begun unpacking groceries.
“She took the baby into the apartment, went downstairs to unload some groceries, and in that short amount of time someone entered the apartment,” he said.
Police said during the press conference that they received a call from the boy’s grandmother at approximately 1pm reporting the child’s disappearance.
The grandmother, who had been watching the child while his mother was at work, explained that she’d sat the child down inside one of the bedroom’s while she put away groceries.
She did not see anyone enter the apartment, officers said.
An Amber Alert for the abducted child has not been issued at this point in time due the fact that authorities do not have a description of the vehicle used.
Police issued a desperate plea to the public on Monday night for their assistance in locating the missing baby, noting that the surveillance footage of the suspected man is all they have to go on at this point in the investigation.
“Today someone is walking around with a 3-month-old baby that they did not have yesterday. If you have this baby, please give that baby back to it’s mother. We can deal with consequences after,” Sgt Camarillo said. “Anybody who is a mother or father, you don’t love anything more than you love your child, this mother is going through a very very bad time, as well as grandma.”
“Grandma was left in charge of the baby and baby is now gone,” he closed.
San Jose authorities are asking anyone with information to call the San Jose Police Department or reach out on one of the hotlines the force has since opened up, listed on their social media accounts.
