A man has stolen a car with a 2-year-old boy inside because he wanted to teach the toddler's father a lesson for leaving him unattended.

A police manhunt was launched after 24-year-old Devon Mills of Bristol, Connecticut, took the orange Cadillac with Luis Trinidad in the backseat from outside a store in Hartford.

It later emerged that the boy's father, who returned from the store to find both car and child missing, had left his son in the car with the engine running.

The New Britain Herald reports that Mills left the toddler with an acquaintance who took him to a police station when she heard about the alert police had issued over the kidnapping.

Mills then parked the car near to where he had taken it and fled on foot but was soon picked up by police. He told officers that he had taken the car because he was "upset" with the boy's father for leaving the 2-year-old alone.

The child was reunited with his family after police confirmed his identity through photographs.

Mills has now been charged with second-degree kidnapping, second-degree larceny, risk of injury to a minor and operating under suspension.

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