Police were minutes away from issuing a Maile Amber Alert on Wednesday after two children were carried off in a stolen SUV in Pearl City.

But the children were found unharmed in less than 15 minutes and the alert process was aborted, said Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Teresa Bell.

Police said a mother left her children — a 4-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl — unattended in a Honda CRV with the keys inside and went back inside a unit at Waiau Gardens on Kamahao Street. That’s when a man in his 20s swiped the vehicle.

Police received a call at 11:46 a.m., and the first officer arrived at the scene eight minutes later. Police found the vehicle at 11:59 a.m. about a mile away on Hoomoana Street.

Flor Barber, who lives across from where the SUV was abandoned, said he saw the vehicle parked on the street before police arrived. "I just saw the guy getting out of the (SUV)," Barber said. "I was glad to see the kids were OK."

Jeff Rivera, whose security camera captured images of the man walking away from the vehicle with a large garbage bag, said police told him the man left the children inside the SUV with the engine running.

Police were looking for a man described as 5 feet 9 inches tall, 150 pounds, with a white T-shirt, blue denim shorts and white shoes. He was last seen heading toward Waimano Home Road on Hoomoana.

Police opened an investigation into unauthorized control of a propelled vehicle.

Police believe the woman and the man don’t know each other. When reached at her home, the woman said she didn’t want to talk about the incident.

Bell said the incident met the three criteria that touch off a Maile Amber Alert: the child must be under 18; there must be sufficient information indicating the child was abducted and is in immediate danger of serious injury or death; and there is sufficient information about the child and the abductor’s vehicle.

The alert was named after Maile Gilbert of Kailua and Amber Hagerman of Texas, who were both abducted and murdered.

Since its creation on Oahu in 2002, the alert has been used only once. In that case, an infant was carried off in a stolen pickup in 2005, according to the Gilbert family. The truck and the 4-month-old girl were quickly found in a church parking lot on Moanalua Road.

The alert aims to rapidly initiate a search for an abducted child because most children who are kidnapped and murdered die within the first three hours after being taken, according to the state’s Missing Child Center Hawaii.

Once the Maile Amber alert is initiated, broadcasters use the Emergency Alert System, the same system used during severe weather emergencies, to air a description of the child and suspected abductor.