OAKLAND PARK, Fla. – The Broward Sheriff’s Office arrested a man Thursday who was accused of stealing a car with a child inside on Saturday, authorities confirmed Friday.
According to an arrest report, BSO deputies were dispatched to the IHOP, located at 3101 W. Oakland Park Blvd., in reference to a stolen vehicle with a 3-year-old boy inside.
Investigators said the child’s mother was exiting the restaurant when she discovered her vehicle and son were gone.
Soon after, deputies located the vehicle at 1901 NW 40th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale, and the child was found unharmed inside. They said 33-year-old Phillip J. Pepe Jr. fled the scene.
Local 10 News obtained the 911 call of an IHOP employee telling the dispatcher about the situation as the mother is heard screaming “Oh my God! Oh my God!” in the background.
The frantic mother then got on the call and said, “He has my son in the car!”
“Oh my God, I just left for one second,” she says later in the call. “Oh my God, my poor baby is in the car with this stranger!”
Dispatcher: I need a description of your son.
Mother: “It’s a – um. He’s just three years old!”
Deputies established a perimeter and called in Aviation and K-9 units for assistance.
According to BSO spokesperson Veda Coleman-Wright, a BSO Special Victims Unit detective received an anonymous tip that Pepe was at a hotel in Lantana in Palm Beach County.
Detectives said when investigators arrived at the hotel, Pepe was gone.
Abid Khan was working Saturday morning when he witnessed the incident.
“Someone actually took the car, there was a kid inside and he just stopping behind your property, and he ran away that’s how I know what happened,” he said.
Coleman-Wright said that based on information obtained from the hotel reservation, detectives with BSO’s V.I.P.E.R. (Violence Intervention Proactive Enforcement Response) team, along with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals Service, located Pepe in Lake Worth, where they arrested him Thursday evening.
According to jail records, Pepe was booked into the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. He is facing charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment of a child and grand theft auto.
He is currently being held without bond on an out-of-county arrest warrant.