Car towed in W. Philly; girl, 7, asleep inside

A repo driver found himself in a real tow jam early Thursday when a 7-year-old girl was discovered asleep inside a minivan he repossessed in West Philadelphia, according to police.

The child's mother, who was wanted on a warrant for an unrelated matter, remains in custody, said Capt. Sekou Kinebrew, police spokesman.

The tow truck operator repossessed the green 2006 Ford Freestar minivan around 2:35 a.m. on the 4500 block of Chestnut Street. The woman who had owned the vehicle told police she left her daughter inside the van while she clocked out of work at a nearby restaurant. When she returned, both the van and her daughter were gone.

The repo driver, who identified himself as Carmine Giannone, said he heard someone yelling that a child was inside the van as he pulled away.

"I started to turn the block, I was making the turn," Giannone told 6ABC. "That's when they said, 'There's a kid in the car! A kid in the car!' You see that all the time as a deterrent for me to stop and check the car. Obviously, I'm going to get out of the danger zone." Giannone said he thought there was only a box under the blankets in the van.

It was only when officers stopped the tow truck at 50th Street and Woodland Avenue that the girl's foot was seen protruding from a blanket in the third row of the van, authorities said. She had slept through the incident.

The mother told authorities that she had left the child alone in the car for about 20 minutes, according to Kinebrew. Police are searching for surveillance video to verify her story, he said. Depending on how long the child was left in the car, the mother could face charges of endangering the welfare of a child.

"Any time of day, and of course in the middle of the night, you don't want to leave your child out there," Kinebrew said. "Bad things can happen."

The mother was taken into custody at the scene, not for the tow-truck incident but on an outstanding warrant from another jurisdiction on an unrelated matter, Kinebrew said. Her daughter will be placed in the care of relatives, police said.

No charges have been filed in the case but it remains under investigation with the Special Victims Unit, because of the age of the child.