The victim was forced to drive around for more than two hours, with the kidnapper in the car next to her baby, before running into the kebab shop for help on May 10.
“I knew I just had to help another human”, the shop’s owner Mohamed said.
The man gave her a phone to call for help.
“She was crying, she was scared,” he said.
“I just wanted to talk to my husband and tell him we were okay, that my daughter was okay,” Kieran, who did not want her surname used, said.
Police soon arrived on the scene, with Kieren’s husband rushing to support his wife and daughter.
She was first approached by the man at the Stud Park Shopping Centre supermarket car park in Rowville around 6pm.
Detectives said the man threatened her with a knife, forcing her into the driver’s seat of her silver Suzuki S-Cross.
The man sat in the back seat with her daughter, before forcing her to drive to electrical stores on the South Gippsland Highway in Cranbourne and Frankston-Dandenong Road in Dandenong.
He demanded her to purchase Apple MacBooks at several stores, while he remained in the car with her baby.
The man told Kieren that he had a gambling debt that he needed to repay.
The man was dropped at Robert Booth Reserve and vanished through the park.
Investigators say they’ve already received numerous tips since they went public with the footage of the suspect.
He has been described as Asian in appearance.Â
