A 1-year-old girl named Emiliana Gonzalez was inside a blue Dodge Charger when a man drove off with it from the 800 block of South Broadway in downtown St. Louis around 10:40 p.m. Sunday, prompting a statewide AMBER Alert. Police describe the child as wearing a gray onesie at the time she was last seen.
The theft happened just blocks from Busch Stadium and Broadway Oyster Bar, a stretch of the downtown commercial corridor, according to Hertz Investment Group. As reported by First Alert 4, the Missouri State Highway Patrol identified the suspect as 43-year-old Joseph Nickell, also known by the nickname JoJo, who was last seen wearing a nude or tan shirt, dark blue jeans and Nike shoes. Investigators describe Nickell as 6 feet tall with dark hair and a mustache.
Witnesses told the highway patrol that the stolen Charger was last seen heading eastbound on Walnut Street, the station's report notes. The vehicle is described as a 2015-2023 blue Dodge Charger with two racing stripes on the hood, carrying Illinois plates and an Illinois temporary tag, per the same account.
How Missouri Decides When to Sound the Alarm
Missouri does not issue AMBER Alerts automatically whenever a car goes missing with a child aboard. State guidelines require law enforcement to have a reasonable belief that a child 17 or younger has been abducted, that the child faces a credible threat of serious injury or death, and that officials have enough descriptive detail about the victim, suspect or vehicle to make an alert useful, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Before a statewide alert goes out, local departments must first hold a mandatory joint evaluation conference call with the patrol's Troop F Headquarters in Jefferson City, the same agency explains.
Once a suspect is caught, the legal exposure can escalate quickly. Under Missouri Revised Statutes Section 565.110, unlawfully removing or confining a person to facilitate a felony or flight amounts to first-degree kidnapping, a Class A or Class B felony, according to the Missouri General Assembly. That means what began as an apparent car theft could carry far heavier penalties than a routine property crime charge.
A Familiar and Usually Survivable Scenario
Cases like this one are not as rare as they might seem, though they typically end without lasting harm to the child. At least 264 children nationwide were documented inside vehicles stolen while left unattended in 2022, according to advocacy group Kids and Car Safety. Research cited by Safience indicates vehicle thefts involving unattended children trigger an average of roughly seven AMBER Alerts nationwide each year, and that thieves frequently abandon the car or the child once they realize a minor is inside.
National outcomes tend to favor recovery. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported assisting law enforcement with 29,568 missing child cases in 2024 and achieving a 91% recovery rate, per NCMEC. Similar recent incidents elsewhere have ended safely, including a Midtown Atlanta car theft rescue and a Colorado case in which a baby was found unharmed after an SUV theft in Aurora.
St. Louis's Own Recent False Alarm
St. Louis has been through a version of this scare before. In March, St. Louis County police activated a statewide AMBER Alert after a reported vehicle theft with a 5-year-old inside in Affton, only for investigators to later determine the abduction claim had been fabricated even though the vehicle theft itself was real, Hoodline previously reported in its AMBER Alert kidnapping hoax coverage. Sunday's case has not been described that way by any agency, and no fabrication claims have been reported in connection with Emiliana's disappearance.
The theft also comes against a broader backdrop of falling property crime downtown. Motor vehicle theft rates in St. Louis sat 7% below 2019 pre-pandemic levels through mid-2025, according to a Council on Criminal Justice report, and total property crimes in Downtown and Downtown West dropped 57.5% between 2022 and 2026 based on SLMPD neighborhood data. Whether the Charger was left running or unlocked when Nickell allegedly took it has not been disclosed, and it remains unclear how quickly investigators located the vehicle after the theft was reported.
Authorities have not said whether Nickell has been taken into custody or what additional charges, beyond a potential kidnapping count, he could eventually face. Anyone with information about Emiliana Gonzalez, Joseph Nickell or the blue Dodge Charger is urged to contact law enforcement.
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