Mother meets son 31 years after abduction

THE mother of a toddler abducted in 1987 said yesterday she was stunned when she learned he had been found and overcome with emotion at finally being reunited with him 31 years later.

Lyneth Mann-Lewis, who discovered last week that authorities had found her son in Connecticut, told a news conference in Toronto that when they met, “I grabbed him, and I squeezed his head and wanted to feel if he was real. I touched him and said, ‘Oh my God, my baby’.”

Jermaine Mann, now 33, responded by saying, “‘Mommy you have my eyes’, and he hugged me, and he kissed me, and we held there for a long time.”

She said she had endured many hard days over the 31 years and boarded a flight to reunite with her son shortly after hearing he’d been found.

“The words ‘your son is alive, we found him,’ that is breathtaking,” she said. “Constant worry is finally over.”

Allan Mann Jr was arrested in Vernon, Connecticut, and accused of abducting his then21-month-old son during a court-ordered visit in Toronto on June 24, 1987.

Authorities say he then entered the US — where he had relatives — and obtained fake identification for himself and his son, including bogus Texas birth certificates.

Authorities received a tip from a relative that he might be living in Connecticut under another name. The 66-year-old Mann appeared briefly in federal court in Hartford.

Jermaine Mann had been told his mother died shortly after his birth, Toronto police said.