A woman is in serious condition after she was beaten and run over as a suspect stole her car, abducting her two-year-old child who was inside the car near Libertyville.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office responded around 3:35 p.m. Thursday to the 16000 block of West Buckley Road in unincorporated Libertyville.
Lake County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli said deputies received a call for a vehicular hijacking with a two-year-old child still inside the vehicle.
A preliminary investigation shows the 34-year-old woman had just returned to her residence.
She pulled into her driveway and brought one of her children inside, Covelli said.
The woman came back to her car to retrieve her other child, a two-year-old boy, when a white BMW pulled into her driveway behind her car.
A man exited the passenger side of the BMW and struggled to get into the victim’s 2021 Volkswagen Atlas as she tried to keep her two-year-old son safe.
The offender battered the woman and knocked her to the ground, Covelli said. He then stole her car with the child inside.
He and the driver of the BMW, described as a 2000s model with a black bumper and loud exhaust, fled from the scene.
The suspect was described as being tall and thin, wearing a grey zip-up hooded sweatshirt and a light green face mask.
One of the two drivers ran the woman over as they fled, causing serious injuries to her extremities, Covelli said.
The victim was still able to call 911 and sheriff’s deputies immediately responded.
Sheriff’s detectives also responded to the scene and the general area to assist in the search for the Volkswagen.
Covelli said that a person working at a business in the 2200 block of Lakeside Drive in Waukegan called 911 to report they saw two vehicles enter the parking lot and the driver of one of the cars abandoned a small child.
The drivers of both vehicles fled the area. The 911 caller at the business rescued the child from the parking lot to prevent the child from wandering onto the roadway.
Waukegan police officers and sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene. Sheriff’s personnel confirmed the found child was the abducted child.
Sheriff’s detectives had called Volkswagen Car-Net in an attempt to track the vehicle.
There was a delay because Volkswagen Car-Net would not track the vehicle with the abducted child until they received payment to reactivate the tracking device in the stolen Volkswagen, Covelli said.
Sheriff’s deputies located the stolen Volkswagen in a parking lot near Casimir Pulaski and Route 43 in Waukegan.
The vehicle will be thoroughly processed for trace evidence. Sheriff’s detectives continue searching for the BMW.
Covelli said the BMW was stolen in the past week from a car dealership in Waukegan.
The woman who was battered and run over remains at an area hospital in serious but stable condition.
Anyone who sees the stolen BMW or has any information about the incident is asked to call the Lake County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division at 847-377-4000 or contact Lake County CrimeStoppers at www.lakecountycrimestoppers.org.