Police: Car thief abandons stolen SUV with child inside

Atlanta police say they're searching for a man who stole a mother's SUV with her 4-year-old child in the back seat on Thursday moing.  The suspect abandoned the SUV after realizing the child was inside, but the suspect remains at large.

According to police, witnesses flagged down an APD officer at a Race Trac gas station on Marietta Boulevard just before 8 a.m.  They said they had seen a woman chasing a gray GMC Terrain down the road and screaming, "My baby is inside the vehicle that just got stolen!"

Investigators say the woman, Hilary Grotewold, flagged down the same officer on Bolton Road and told him that she pulled up to the air pump to fill her tires with her 4-year-old child inside her SUV.  She says when she bent down to put air in her tire, someone drove off in her SUV. 

Grotewold told police she chased the SUV to a nearby CVS pharmacy.  That's where the suspect abandoned the SUV after realizing there was a child in the back.  The suspect did get away with Grotewold's purse and iPhone.  Police are working to track the phone's location.

Police say the suspect was a black man who was wearing a gray hat and a gray back pack.  Construction workers tell police they saw the suspect running east on Marietta Boulevard toward La Dawn Lane. 

No one was hurt.