Woman reunited with beloved cat after being carjacked on highway
By Lori Bordonaro
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MANHATTAN, New York (WCBS) — A New Yorker says she lost not just her Maserati, but also her beloved pet cat when she was carjacked Sunday.
Thankfully, social media helped reunite the two.
Victim was rear-ended before car was stolen
Ronnette Riley, a Manhattan architect, was driving on the West Side Highway with her Sphynx cat, Eilee, in the vehicle when she was rear-ended by a Mercedes. Both drivers pulled off at 95th Street and got out of their vehicles to exchange information.
“As I’m talking to him – this is all within two minutes – my car takes off,” Riley said. “Then he jumped in the Mercedes and he took off, so the two cars took off in tandem. And I’m running down Riverside Drive.”
Police used an app on Riley’s phone to track her car to the Whitestone Bridge, where the driver had crashed.
An 18-year-old and a 20-year-old were taken into custody, but Eilee was nowhere in sight.
“Then I was like, now what?” Riley said. “I was worried they might have thrown her out of the car.”
“This is not a regular cat in a regular situation” It turned out Eilee had been dumped alone in the cold.
She was spotted hours later, shivering outside Pa Picar restaurant in Inwood. The restaurant’s owner took her in and says he knew immediately she wasn’t a stray.
“Not often you see a cat with hairless and with a striped shirt on it. This is not a regular cat in a regular situation,” owner Enmanuel Ortega said.
Through the power of social media, Riley and her cat were reunited.
Although Riley’s luxury car is totaled, she says she has what’s most important.
“There was a feel-good part to this, right? It could’ve been, I could’ve lost all my stuff, my car and my cat,” she said.
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