UPDATE: Louisiana State Police are reporting that the Amber Alert issued earlier for the missing Jeanerette infant has been canceled.
Stepping away from your car while it’s running for even a few seconds provides the perfect opportunity for someone to get in and slip away.
For the mother of 9-month-old Liam Allen, it took 15 minutes of prayer for someone to hijack her car with her baby in the back seat sleeping.
“My thing is, if you’re going pray, you leave your angel in the car and you let the devil walk you in church. While he took your child,” said Janelle Allen Charles, the infant’s grandmother.
She learned around 11 p.m. that her grandson was kidnaped from the Calvary Pentecostal Church parking lot.
“We didn’t know what we were up against. He in the hands of a killer, a molester,” said Charles.
The kidnapped infant was located safe in New Orleans still in the stolen vehicle.
“We didn’t know what we we’re up against. He in the hands of a killer, a molester,” said Charles.
The suspect, now identified as 33-year-old Terry Doehling of Lafayette, was captured in New Orleans hours later.
“They said that he had been pulling on every car in that parking lot,” Charles added.
Doehling was booked and charged with kidnapping and auto theft. Some people believe the mother, too, should face the consequences.
“I think that she needs to go to jail for what she did. It is a crime to leave a child in the car,” said a family friend who wishes to remain unidentified.
The baby’s father, who was working during the time, is also facing criticism.
“I don’t think social media should bash him. That was her call solely,” she added.
Liam Allen will reunite with the family after hospital examinations are completed at a New Orleans hospital.
“I was just praying, asking God. Cover him shield him,” said Charles.
The family hopes that this terrifying situation sends a message across the entire community that crime lurks even where you least expect it.
ORIGINAL:
Major Wendell Raborn tells News 10 the Sheriff’s Office received a call in reference to the incident at 11:17 p.m.
The child has been identified as Liam Allen, an 8-month old black male.
The vehicle, a white 2002 Nissan Maxima, four door was parked in a church parking lot in the 12000 block of Highway 90 East with the engine running and the child asleep inside.
Security footage shows a white male with a white shirt, shorts, glasses, and receding hair pulled into a ponytail taking the car and heading West on the U.S. 90 Frontage Road.
Raborn says the vehicle has a Louisiana license plate number 191CFG.
Anyone with information on the vehicle’s whereabouts is urged to call the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office or Iberia Crime Stoppers at 364-TIPS.
