Police arrested a woman Thursday evening in connection with the kidnapping of a 3-day-old baby boy from a Pittsburgh hospital, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
The baby, named Bryce Coleman, was found late Thursday in the Investment Building in downtown Pittsburgh, according to the Post-Gazette. He was in a white shirt and diaper when he disappeared around 1 p.m. on Thursday.
The baby and his parents were preparing to leave Magee-Womens Hospital when a woman – described as 5-foot-4, 180 pounds and around 25 years old – carried the baby out on foot. The hospital confirmed the baby was kidnapped. Authorities issued a statewide alert.
Surveillance footage from nearby Life Uniforms showed a woman fitting the kidnapper’s description buying size large scrubs. She had been waiting for the store to open before 9 a.m. Thursday morning and told the store clerk she would start training at Magee on Monday. She paid $16.19 for the scrubs, according to the Post-Gazette, receiving a 10 percent employee discount.
Sources told WPXI.com that the woman cut off a security bracelet on the baby’s wrist 45 minutes before leaving. The hospital’s security bracelets are so sensitive and are set off if the baby leaves a specified perimeter, according to the Post-Gazette.
According to the hospital’s website, nearly 10,000 babies were born at Magee in 2006.
Bryce Coleman’s grandmother, Charmaine King, sobbed as she pleaded on WPXI for her grandson to be returned.
“Please, God, please return my grandson,” she said.
Emergency personnel were checking the baby and planned to return him to Magee on Thursday evening.
Infant abductions are rare, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Of the 800,000 children reported missing every year in the U.S., 115 are in the most serious category of those who are taken by a stranger and killed, or taken by someone who intends to keep them.
Two weeks ago, a 48-year-old California woman who had told her husband she was pregnant tried to kidnap an Orange County baby. She was charged with kidnapping.
The Grio: NYC woman pleads guilty to 1987 kidnapping
And Nejdra Nance, born Carlina White, was discovered in December – 23 years after being abducted from a Harlem hospital in 1987 when she was just 19 days old.
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