Traffic police in Ufa are looking into a report that a badly-parked car was towed away with a child still inside, a regional official said.
The city's traffic police department was informed on Friday about a Daewoo Matiz that was blocking traffic, head of the department Dinar Gilmutdinov wrote in his blog Tuesday. In the presence of two onlookers the traffic police inspected the car and took photographs before ordering the tow-truck drive to take it away.
"The child in the back seat was possibly unnoticed because its rear windows were tinted," Gilmutdinov said, Interfax reported.
"The girl inside was either asleep or frightened and did not make it known that she was there," he said.
Dilara Gafarova, the car's owner, said she had picked her 7-year-old daughter from day care and decided to stop by the local municipal offices on the way home, Utro.ru reported.
She couldn't find a vacant parking spot and decided to leave her car in one of the lanes outside the building. When she returned several minutes later, she saw that her car was being towed away. She had to chase the truck for several blocks before the driver spotted her and stopped.
Gafarov was fined 1,500 rubles ($46) for illegal parking.
