Car stolen in Wigan with baby in the back Published duration 24 January 2013

media caption Louise Waine: ''I was just completely devastated''

A car thief reported his own crime after discovering the vehicle had a seven-week-old baby boy in the back.

Police said a blue Subaru Impreza car was parked on Moor Road in Orrell, Wigan, at about 19:35 GMT on Tuesday.

Baby Leo's father Tom Moulsdale, 24, briefly left the car to enquire about some work at a house. The thief got into the running vehicle and drove off.

Police took an anonymous call 15 minutes later about a baby being left in a car three miles away in Billinge.

The abandoned vehicle was recovered and Leo was found unharmed.

'Driving erratically'

Leo's mother Louise Waine, 24, said a friend had seen the Subaru driving past.

"My friend was driving down the street, the car overtook her and she thought it was Tom in the car - but he was driving erratically.

"She thought he couldn't have been driving like that with a baby in the car."

"I felt paralysed and panicky. To me, this wasn't real, this wasn't happening."

Ms Waine went straight to the abandoned car where she found Leo asleep in the back of the vehicle.

"I got out the car with no shoes on, ran over and got him out," she said.

Det Insp Graham Atherton said the incident was not a targeted attack.

He said: "It simply was an opportunist crime where someone has took the car and realised the baby was in the back.

"Maybe he was afraid to stop there and then - he has gone to a second location, abandoned the car and backed it up with a phone call."

The offender is described as a white male in his 20s wearing a dark-coloured bob hat, a dark hooded top and lighter coloured trousers or tracksuit bottoms.