HARRISON TWP. — A local Amazon delivery driver is being hailed a hero for reuniting a missing toddler with her parents in Harrison Township.
RELATED: Baby inside stolen car reportedly OK after thief leaves child, in car seat, in the street
Two-year-old Haleigh, went missing Aug. 27 after her father’s car was stolen from a Marathon gas station on Troy Street in Dayton.
Haleigh was asleep in the backseat of the car.
Amazon delivery driver Charles Rucker found Haleigh minutes later along the road on Adair Avenue while he was delivering packages.
“Something caught my eye, and I looked down there and my thought was, “That’s a baby,”’ Rucker said.
Haleigh was strapped in her car seat and pushed up against a fence, alone and scared, Rucker said.
“She was rubbing her eyes and was quite. I guess she heard me coming,” said Rucker. “She looked up and saw me and reached her hand out and started crying. I got up to her and kneeled down and told her, “You’re going to be okay. I am not going to leave you.”'
Rucker told News Center 7′s Katy Andersen that he wasn’t on his normal route because he was running late for work that day.
“I just thank the Lord for putting me in a position to be there,” said Rucker. “If I would have been there at 11 o’clock, I was assigned another route so I wouldn’t have been there.”
Rucker said he stayed with Haleigh until police and her mother arrived.
“The way the little girl embraced her mother, and the way she embraced her little girl, you could just see the love there,” Rucker said.
Haleigh’s parents declined to do an interview with News Center 7 on Thursday.
Her father said off camera that he left the car running when it was stolen and that he feels guilty for what happened, but he is so thankful that Rucker found her.
Dayton police officers are still looking for the person who stole the car with Haleigh inside.
Cox Media Group
