A 2-year-old boy has been reunited with his family after their car was stolen with him inside, thanks to the teamwork of two Michigan school bus drivers.
The toddler's parents were dropping off another child when a carjacker drove off with their child inside.
Dave Skinner, a driver for Kelloggsville Public Schools in the Grand Rapids area, was on his regular route last Tuesday morning when the two parents flagged down his school bus in Kentwood.
Surveillance footage from inside the bus shows the frantic parents pleading for help.
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"Call the police!" the father tells the driver as the mother can be heard sobbing next to him. "Somebody steal the car. There’s a baby inside!"
After calling 911, Skinner got on the school bus radio frequency to alert other drivers to be on the lookout.
That's when bus driver Sue Figueroa realized she had recently passed a boy who fit the child's description standing alone in a driveway. When she called to alert the other drivers, Kristin Nickelson, the school district’s director of transportation, told her to immediately turn around, Nickelson told NBC affiliate WOOD.
Video shows Figueroa trying to coax the toddler onto the bus, and after some initial apprehension, she manages to win his trust and get him to go with her. The boy was later reunited with his parents.
“It was a good day and a good outcome,” said Skinner.
Nickelson called Skinner and Figueroa heroes for their quick actions that day.
Jim Alston, superintendent of Kelloggsville Public Schools, told NBC News in a statement Skinner, Figueroa and Nickelson "all did a great job getting this two-year-old back with his parents."
"I don’t know if we’re heroes," Skinner told NBC News. "Drivers are very attentive to all the kids in the neighborhoods while we’re picking them up. And if they see something odd or strange, they’re real quick to get on the radio and holler back."
Police said they located the stolen vehicle in Grand Rapids shortly after it was stolen. No arrests have been made in the case.
