The 4-year-old's mother in Oklahoma said her son was visiting his father in Memphis for the summer.
A nimble 4-year-old boy called his mother from the back seat of his dad's car to report that he had been carjacked and didn't know where he was, authorities said.
The child had been left in his father's vehicle with the engine running while his dad ran into a store, police said. That's when an unidentified man jumped inside and drove off, according to Memphis authorities.
The little boy used his dad's cellphone to call his mother while he was the unwitting passenger in a stolen car, police said.
“He called and he kept telling me that some dude was driving his daddy’s car,” his mother told CBS affiliate WREG-TV. She asked to not be identified.
Then the alleged car thief got on the phone, she said.
“The dude got on the phone and was like ‘Um, somebody stole the car. I’m going to take him back to his daddy,'” she recounted. The man then hit the boy in the head and hung up, the mother said.
She called right back. Her son said that "the dude in the blue shirt had his daddy’s car. I said, ‘What else is he wearing?’ He said, ‘a black mask."
The man stopped the car about a mile from where he had taken it, and left, leaving the boy by himself, police said.
The fretting boy told his mom he didn't know where he was, and that all he could see were houses. So she instructed him to get in the front seat and honk the horn to alert police, she said.
Police arrived and took the boy back to his dad, who was ticketed for leaving a vehicle unattended, authorities said.
No arrests have been made in the incident and no information was released about the suspect.
The mom, who lives in Oklahoma, said her son was visiting his father in Memphis for the summer. The carjacking occurred on the child's first night in Tennessee, she said.
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