A mother and father gave chase after their child was spirited off by the driver of a Uber ride share vehicle in Mexico City on Monday.
The child’s father, Gustavo “E,” 32, was traveling in an Uber with his 7-year-old son in Álvaro Obregón when he asked the driver to stop at a stand selling flowers. Gustavo exited the vehicle to make a purchase, leaving his son in the backseat.
The driver, a 71-year-old Iranian national identified as Mohammad Mohammdi Shir Mahaleh, then drove off with the boy.
The newspaper Milenio reported that Gustavo quickly went to a spa where his wife works and found she was already speaking with the boy on her cellphone, who told her he was near a supermarket in the area.
The couple traveled there together in the mother’s sports utility vehicle and rescued their son, before the driver attempted to escape.
The trio then chased the Uber driver and managed to cut him off on a nearby street by ramming his vehicle and forcing it onto the sidewalk, where he was arrested by police.
There were 21,931 criminal cases related to kidnapping in 2021, of which 2,027, or 9%, were in Mexico City.
The crime has been of increasing concern for citizens in the capital: in 2015 there were only 742 cases reported, 63% fewer than in 2021. The worst year on record for crimes related to kidnapping was 2019, when 2,443 crimes were registered.
With reports from El Universal, Milenio and Sopitas
