Car Thief Returns Child Story: A Tale of Two Different Incidents

A viral social media story claiming an Oregon car thief returned a baby to its mother after stealing her vehicle contains elements of truth but combines two separate incidents that occurred years apart in different states.

The widely shared posts, which garnered more than 15 million views on Threads alone in October, showed surveillance images of a Black man carrying a baby in a car seat into a gas station. According to the caption, the man stole a car in Oregon, discovered a baby inside, returned the child safely, scolded the parents for leaving the child alone, then drove away again.

While compelling, the story as presented is miscaptioned. The viral posts blend details from a 2021 incident in Beaverton, Oregon, with surveillance images from an unrelated 2018 car theft in West Palm Beach, Florida.

In the actual Oregon case, a white male in his 20s or 30s with dark braided hair stole an SUV from outside Basics Meat Market on Canyon Road in Beaverton on January 16, 2021. The thief discovered a 4-year-old boy in a booster seat, not a baby as claimed in the viral posts.

Beaverton Police spokesman Matt Henderson told The Oregonian that the thief drove back to the store, returned the child to his mother, and “actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police on her.”

The mother had left her car engine running with doors unlocked while she went inside to purchase milk and meat. Though visibly shaken by the incident, she later told local media, “As moms, we get really busy and we think we’re just running in for a second, and this is just a perfect example of just letting our guards down and how terribly it could have ended.”

Henderson emphasized that the mother’s actions weren’t criminal as she remained within sight and sound of her child, but advised parents to take extra precautions with children in vehicles. The car was recovered hours later in Portland, though reports don’t indicate if the thief was ever apprehended.

Meanwhile, the surveillance images in the viral posts actually show a completely different incident from March 20, 2018, in Palm Beach County, Florida. In that case, a man stole a black Kia Rio from a RaceWay gas station in West Palm Beach, apparently unaware that a 5½-month-old baby was in the back seat.

Surveillance footage showed the thief arriving at the gas station in a white SUV around 3:24 a.m., taking the Kia, and later pulling into a Sunoco gas station several miles away. There, he struggled to remove the baby’s car seat from the vehicle before carrying it inside the gas station and signaling to the clerk to call police.

The clerk, while on the phone with 911, took the unharmed baby from the thief. The following day, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office announced they had taken a suspect, Marquise Hudson, into custody after his mother identified him in the surveillance footage and reported him to authorities. Hudson later pleaded guilty to the car theft and was sentenced to 180 days in jail.

The blending of these two separate incidents highlights how easily misinformation can spread on social media platforms. Users shared the miscaptioned story across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter (now X), demonstrating how compelling narratives can quickly go viral regardless of accuracy.

While both incidents involve car thieves who showed concern for children inadvertently caught up in their crimes, they remain distinct events separated by years, geography, and circumstances — a reminder of the importance of verifying information before sharing it online.