Police have apprehended a man accused of stealing a running car that had three young children inside.

Paterson police say Frank Saggese, 43, forced his way into a car as the children's mother was leaving the vehicle on Broadway in Paterson. Saggese allegedly drove off with the children inside, dragging the mother, who was holding onto the steering wheel, behind for a short distance.

The children, ages, 2, 4 and 5, were dropped off in front of an auto parts store on Goffle Road in Hawthorne. Witnesses say Saggese then drove off. Hawthorne police found the children and took them to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center to be reunited with their mother. They were not harmed.

Police say that Saggese then parked the stolen car at the 7-Eleven in Hawthorne and stole another car from the parking lot.

The man who fell victim at the 7-Eleven, Miguel Lora, says he had more sympathy for the first victim, the mother.



"I got two kids," says Lora. "I don't know where I would have been if something like this happened to me and my kids."

Saggese, of East Hanover, allegedly abandoned that second car at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, where police apprehended him.