New Mother's Nightmare - Baby kidnapped by fake nurse
Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:58 pm
Omgosh, this poor woman. I can't even imagine!! It's kinda hard to believe that nobody would check out someone who kept visiting in scrubs and no ID badge. My only comfort is that the baby will likely not be harmed since the woman who stole her probably just wants a baby. Let's just pray they find the baby and return her to her mother. Hopefully the abductor will seek medical attention for the baby's jaundice and get caught that way.
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) _ The woman accused of abducting a newborn girl apparently blended in with hospital staff in the days before the child's disappearance.
Nurses on duty at the time the woman visited the newborn, Priscilla Nicole Maldonado, and her family remembered seeing her on repeated visits to the hospital, police said.
But no one asked why she wasn't wearing the correct color of hospital scrubs or why she didn't have an identification badge, officials said. Nurses from doctors' offices and other medical facilities often wear scrubs to work and sometimes come to visit newborns and their families, Lubbock police Lt. Roy Bassett said.
"From what I understand, they don't check and identify every possible visitor who comes to the hospital," he said. "She didn't make any attempt to take the baby from the hospital and didn't spark any suspicions."
Police were still searching Monday for the infant and the suspected abductor, who befriended the mother, Erica Ysasaga, while she was in the hospital and later stole the baby from her home. Priscilla has jaundice, and blood tests before her abduction showed her condition worsening, University Medical Center spokesman Greg Bruce said.
"Time is paramount," Bassett said, adding that police were following up on a "significant number" of calls Monday.
"We're obviously still canvassing the neighborhood and talking to everyone we possibly can," Bassett said.
In the hospital, the suspected kidnapper led Ysasaga led the mother to believe she was a nurse by dressing like one, asking questions about the baby and sometimes retrieving towels, the family said. When Ysasaga was discharged, the woman asked for her address, saying she had a swing and some clothes for the baby.
"She was concerned all the time about my baby so I thought she was a nurse," Ysasaga told KAMC-TV.
On Sunday, the woman visited the family's home and told the mother she wanted to put the newborn in a baby pageant.
"I said, 'No, my baby is sick. She can't be out in public,"' Ysasaga said. "She said they would pay me $100 and my baby would win stuff."
The woman then said she had relatives on the next block and wanted to show them the baby. Ysasaga said she would go with her, but the woman disappeared with the newborn while Ysasaga was momentarily distracted.
"My son ran ahead of me so I tried to reach over and grab him and when I did that, I turned around. Just like that, my baby was gone," she said.
In trying to gain Ysasaga's confidence, the woman gave Ysasaga a driver's license number and Social Security number "so that you have some confidence that you know who I am," Bassett said the woman told Ysasaga. Bassett said neither number matched with the name the woman had given the mother.
Ysasaga told police she saw two vehicles _ a red Pontiac four-door car and a white van _ leaving the area but did not see the woman or the baby in one of them, Bassett said.
Authorities don't believe the woman was a hospital employee based on the color of her scrubs and the fact that she was not wearing a name tag.
"To the best of our knowledge, it's not an employee of our hospital," Bruce said. "The description of what the employee was wearing, how the employee was acting while they visited with the mother in the hospital is not consistent with any of our staff."
Police on Monday were checking surveillance video from the hospital to try to identify the woman.
Bassett said police believed the abduction was planned over a number of days.
"I think that at the very least she has some local ties," he said.
http://www.kfdm.com/engine.pl?station=k ... local.html
