DECATUR, Ga. – Two young children who police say were kidnapped from the side of an Atlanta-area interstate early Wednesday are safe but authorities are looking for the man who grabbed them and later dropped them off with friends, authorities say.

Three-year-old Jalen Mattison and his 1-year-old sister Amari Mattison were with their mother when their Volvo broke down on Interstate 20, east of Atlanta. The mother, whose name was not released, told investigators that a passer-by offered to help by driving the woman and her children in his Jeep Cherokee to a Shell gas station just off a nearby highway exit, DeKalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.
When a county officer pulled over to investigate the abandoned vehicle, the mother left her children at the station and walked back to her broken-down car, Parish said. By the time she returned to the gas station, her children were gone and an intensive search began.
The suspect very soon after took the children to the home of two women, who say they only know him by his nickname, which investigators declined to make public.
The women, who were not named, said they thought they were babysitting. They say they didn't realize what was happening until they saw media reports about the abduction in the afternoon and then contacted police at a local courthouse and turned over the children.

The women were being questioned Wednesday afternoon but do not face charges.
"We do not believe that they knew the kids had been kidnapped," Parish said.

Amin Madhani, who manages the Shell station, said detectives reviewed a station surveillance tape that showed a man in a Jeep Cherokee arriving at 1:09 a.m. and parking near a pump for roughly 15 minutes before driving off. Madhani said the detectives who examined the tape saw no sign of the missing children. The mother told police that the man was black, roughly 6 feet tall and thin and was driving a green Cherokee. The children and their mother were taken to the police station, but it was not clear whether they have been reunited. Parish said DeKalb detectives contacted Georgia's Division of Family and Children Services as they learned more about the family. Parish would not explain why police contacted the child welfare agency, which investigates abused and neglected children and provides support services for troubled family.

(CNN) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a Class I recall for 40,000 pounds of ground beef products intended for Georgia school lunches, due to possible E. coli contamination. The beef was produced by Palo Duro Meat in Amarillo, Texas, by September 9, according to a statement released by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service Friday. It was shipped to two Georgia warehouses, where it was to be distributed to a variety of institutions, including six school districts associated with the National School Lunch Program. However, USDA authorities say they are not aware of the beef having been served as part of any school lunches, adding that the bulk of the beef products have not left the warehouses.
The beef was shipped in 40-pound boxes. Each case contains the mark "Est. 7282" and a production code of 19110.
The contaminated products may have gotten mixed in with commercial products due to a sample tracking error, according to the USDA statement. Neither the company nor the USDA has received any reports of illnesses related to consumption of the beef. E. coli bacteria can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure, according to the USDA statement. Babies and toddlers, seniors, and persons with weakened immune systems are the most susceptible to food-borne illnesses, the statement says.