NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Metro Nashville Police have charged the parents of one-year-old Nolan Ishimwe are being charged by citation with child endangerment, a misdemeanor, for leaving their son alone in an unlocked, running car in the parking lot of the Inglewood Kroger while they shopped for groceries.
🚨AMBER ALERT: Woman steals car from Nashville grocery store with a 1-year-old boy in the back seat. His parents were inside shopping and reported their car and son missing at 7 pm. The suspect is a white woman with a small dog. pic.twitter.com/myVDgRwcwf
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 7, 2021
The parents are identified as the father, Ruhumuriza Mukunzi, 29, and the mother, Nyirankumi Nyirankumi, 26.
A woman came upon the unlocked and running Ford Focus at 6:19 p.m. Wednesday and drove off with the child in the back seat. The car was located shortly after midnight on Home Road in East Nashville. Baby Nolan was asleep inside and unharmed.
Brandi Rhodes, 33, is a suspect in the theft of the Ford Focus and the kidnapping of Baby Nolan. She is wanted for questioning in this case and also has an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on a misdemeanor assault charge. Anyone seeing Rhodes or knowing her whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 615-742-7463.
A review of surveillance video from the Kroger parking lot shows that the parents arrived at 6 p.m. and went inside the grocery store. A woman walked up to the car at 6:19 p.m., saw that it was running, got inside and drove off.
The parents exited the grocery store nearly 40 minutes later. Mukunzi called 911 at 7:02 p.m. to report that his car and son were missing (an interpreter was enlisted by the 911 call taker to assist in getting information from Mukunzi). Listen below.
The first East Precinct patrol officer arrived in the parking lot at 7:07 p.m.
After gathering information at the scene, patrol officers began a search for the Ford Focus and also alerted Youth Services Division detectives, who responded to the Kroger and began amassing information about the child and surveillance video in preparation for Twitter dissemination by the MNPD and submission of an Amber Alert request packet to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the only agency in the state that can issue an Amber Alert. The Amber Alert was pushed to cell phones in Middle Tennessee at approximately 11:30 p.m. The issuance of an Amber Alert is a complex process, requiring various layers of notification across Tennessee.
A citizen telephoned police at 12:06 a.m. today to report that the Ford Focus was parked in the 900 block of Home Road.
