By Helena Wegner
Merced Sun-Star (Merced, Calif.)
WARDEN, Wash. — A 21-year-old woman accused of kidnapping a baby drove off in a police car after she was arrested, Washington deputies said.
Rita Gabriella Lozano of Moses Lake stole a vehicle at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, from a residence in Warden, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
A 2-month-old baby was in the car at the time, deputies said.
Maria Valez told KREM her mother had her son and was stopping at an apartment when Lozano — her brother’s sister-in-law — is accused of stealing the vehicle.
Deputies said they tracked Lozano using traffic cameras.
About 15 minutes later, according to deputies, someone reported a vehicle that matched the stolen one going “all over the road and in and out of the ditch.”
A deputy stopped Lozano, arrested her and put her in the back of a patrol car in handcuffs, authorities said.
The child was reunited with his family, unharmed, deputies said.
But while Lozano was in the back of the police car, deputies said, she “contorted her body to move her cuffed hands to the front.”
Then she’s accused of moving to the front of the police car and driving off.
She made it about a half-mile before deputies stopped her by using their vehicles to pin the car she was in, authorities said.
Deputies said she was taken to a hospital and was “possibly under the influence of an unknown substance.”
She was arrested on suspicion of second-degree kidnapping, reckless endangerment and theft of a motor vehicle.
“I can’t trust no one nowadays,” the child’s father, Eddie Perez, told KREM. “Can’t trust anyone. I never thought this would happen to us.”
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