PORTLAND, Ore. — The city of Portland was put on notice Sunday evening when someone stole a car with a sleeping 7-year-old girl inside, prompting an Amber Alert and search efforts throughout the city. Thankfully, the story had a happy ending.
According to the Portland Police Bureau, officers responded shortly before 7 p.m. to the stolen vehicle call. It happened near Southeast 49th and Southeast Powell Boulevard, and police were told that Yamilet Martinez, 7, was asleep in the car.
"My only child, you can imagine. Any mother would be desperate to find her children," Yuriria Cornejo, Yamilet's mother, told reporters later that night.
The car was described as a 2011 black Honda Civic with no plates. Yamilet's family told police that they'd left the car running for a short time while they returned a moving truck.
"She walked away from the car for just a moment and then she turned around and then she realized the car was driving away," said PPB spokesman Sgt. Kevin Allen.
Cornejo's desperation washed over the Portland metro area. For the next four hours, Allen said, about 50 police officers were tasked with searching for the stolen car and 10 detectives worked overtime.
"There was a tremendous amount of urgency here," Allen said. "Most of us are parents and we basically see our own kids in the faces of every child we deal with."
PPB published photos of Yamilet and the stolen car about an hour after the 911 call. Officers started a grid search and community members flooded police with tips.
Then, at 10:35 p.m., Oregon State Police pushed out an Amber Alert. OSP told KGW that while the case didn't meet all the requirements for this kind of notification, they felt it was necessary given the circumstances.
"Almost every Amber Alert is going to take a matter of hours to come out," Allen said. "They don't normally come out right when the call comes out."
By then, many community members like Nick Khoury had seen the news reports and were out doing their part to search for Yamilet.
"You know it was appealing to the public and I thought, 'Hey, that's me!' And so I felt like I needed to do something, I couldn't just sit there," Khoury said.
Khoury drove around Laurelhurst Park. But around that same time, Portland police officers Nick Bianchini and Greg Budey spotted the black Honda Civic in the same area. It had been ditched along Southeast Laurelhurst Place near Ankeny. The doors to the car were locked.
"So they got out to check it and sure enough they could see through the window that the little girl was still in the car fast asleep," Allen said. "One of the officers was able to reach through the opening and get the door unlocked, and when he opened the door that's when the alarm went off."
That's when Yamilet woke up.
Cornejo said it's possible that her little girl slept through the whole ordeal that everyone else had lived through.
"I'm happy that she's home and doesn't seem to really know what happened, which is better for me and her to not be traumatized," said Cornejo.
No arrests have been made in the case, but Allen said that investigators are processing evidence, including video from where the car was stolen and where it was recovered. It will be important to figure out the thief's true intentions, Allen said — to just steal a car, or to kidnap a child.
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