Cat reunited with owner after Manhattan carjacking

By CeFaan Kim

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    WEST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) — A woman was rear-ended and then carjacked in Manhattan — her luxury sports car was gone in a flash, but it was her cat inside the car that had her worried the most.

Ronette Riley loves her Maserati.

“It had lime green calibers, lime green stitching — it was my dream car. I worked really hard my whole life — I wanted a dream car,” Riley said.

She loves to hear its engine purr — and she loves speed.

“I’ve had it at 170,” she adds.

However, on Sunday around 11 p.m., she was rear-ended by a black Mercedes Benz on the West Side Highway near 95th Street.

“It was a couple — couldn’t have been nicer. He said he was on his phone and didn’t realize. They had the whole story down,” said Riley.

Within two minutes, while she was distracted, someone jumped into her Maserati and sped off — with her cat, Eilee, inside.

“I was more worried about the cat than anything. They drove away so fast. Cops got there so fast,” she says.

Riley says police showed up within a minute, and they knew right away how to track her vehicle and follow it. She says officers cornered the suspects on the Whitestone Bridge, where they crashed.

Police arrested an 18 and 20-year-old man, but Eilee was still missing.

Ortega said nobody believed him.

“I just wanted to help her as much as I could,” said Riley’s assistant, Paige Lundgren.

The next morning, Lundgren posted missing flyers on social media and checked animal rescue centers. Within hours they found her on Facebook a the Pa’Picar restaurant in Inwood.

They knew she was not a stray.

“The cat was dressed. The cat had like a t-shirt, like a striped t-shirt. Was a hairless cat with two different color eyes. Was a very weird cat,” said restaurant owner Manuel Ortega, “So I go outside to ask the people, like you don’t see nobody with a hairless cat with t-shirt? And the people started talking to me like what are you talking about, a hairless cat with a t-shirt on?” This is not gonna work man. So I posted on social media for find the owner for this cat.”

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