Stranger takes off in minivan with 2-year-old inside

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WHDH) -- A stranger took off in a minivan left running outside a store with a two-year boy sleeping inside.

Surveillance video captured the man walking toward the minivan, and then taking off in it.

The driver, the boy’s father, had run into EZ Laundry on Friendship Street to throw a load in.

"What happened? Everybody went, ‘Oh no no no,’ I went outside, I saw him and I ran but I couldn't meet him, so I saw somebody at the mechanic shop over there. That person helped me. I said, ‘follow that car please,’” said Adewale Adeni.

They followed the man but lost him, so Adeni called police who found the van nearby about 15 minutes later -- abandoned and still running, with the boy untouched, and the man nowhere to be found.

The father and son were reunited after a brief, but harrowing ordeal with the Adeni at one point thinking, "I’m a dead person because that's my life, I’m happy got my son back.”

Police are still searching for the man who took off in the minivan.