A “serious breach” has caused Volkswagen to delay tracing a stolen car with a 2-year-old child inside, the sheriff’s office said.

A “serious breach” caused a delay in finding a stolen car with a toddler stuck inside after Volkswagen’s vehicle tracking service demanded payment before agreeing to help, the local sheriff’s office said.

The carjacking occurred just after 3:30 p.m. Thursday when the 34-year-old mother returned to her home on the 16000 block of Highway 137 in Libertyville, a village about 35 miles north of Chicago, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. .

After carrying one of her children from the car to the house, the woman followed her other child — a two-year-old boy — in the car when she discovered a white BMW pulling into the driveway behind her 2021 Volkswagen Atlas. The man got out of the BMW and knocked the woman to the ground as she tried to protect her son before driving off in her car with the boy inside, the sheriff’s office said.

A stolen car with a 2-year-old child inside in Libertyville, Illinois.
A stolen car with a 2-year-old child inside in Libertyville, Illinois.Lake County Sheriff

The hijacker and the driver of the BMW he arrived in fled the scene, and one of the drivers hit the woman as they were fleeing, causing the sheriff’s office to call “serious injuries to her limbs.” The woman is six months pregnant, according to NBC Chicago.

In search of a missing child and a stolen car, authorities contacted Volkswagen Car-Net — a service that allows Volkswagen owners to control and track their cars from an app — in an attempt to find the car and the child inside.

But the company “will not track a vehicle with a kidnapped child until it receives payment to reactivate the tracking device in the stolen Volkswagen,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook.

In a statement provided to NBC Chicago, a Volkswagen spokesman said the company “takes the safety of its customers very seriously.”

“Volkswagen has a procedure in place with a third-party support provider, Car-Net, involving emergency requests from law enforcement. They have successfully completed this process in previous incidents. Unfortunately, in this case there was a serious violation of the process. We are dealing with the parties involved, ”the message says.

A Volkswagen spokesperson did not immediately respond to NBC News’s request for comment.

Authorities found the child on the road at 2200 Lakeside Drive in Waukegan, a city about 10 miles northeast of Libertyville, after a person working at a nearby business called 911 and said they saw two cars drive in to the parking lot. where one driver abandoned the child before both cars fled.

It was not immediately clear how long it took the authorities to find the child. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office could not be contacted.

Authorities found the stolen Volkswagen in a parking lot near Casimir Pulaski Drive and Highway 43 in Waukegan, according to the sheriff’s office.

The mother of a child hit in a car theft is in hospital in a serious but stable condition, the sheriff’s office said.

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