Newborn baby snatched by bogus nurse
Montreal – A newborn girl snatched from a hospital in Quebec by a woman disguised as a nurse has been rescued after four amateur sleuths tracked down the kidnapper and led police to her door.
The infant, Victoria, was only hours old when a woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared at her mother’s bedside on Sunday and said that she needed to weigh the child and perform some tests.
Melissa McMahon, the mother, then saw the nurse head through a different door from the one that other nurses had taken. ‘‘ My wife ran to where they did Victoria’s previous tests and she wasn’t there,’’ Simon Boisclair told reporters. ‘‘She ran to the hallway and the nurse was gone.’’
Police released a picture of the suspect and asked the public to watch for a red Toyota Yaris with a French ‘‘Baby on Board’’ sticker.
McMahon described the three hours that followed as ‘‘the worst time of our lives’’ in an online post. ‘‘The helplessness was difficult to accept.’’ However, the story of the kidnapping had raised considerable public concern.
Two sisters, Melizanne and Sharelle Bergeron, and their friends, Marc-Andre Cote and Charlene Plante, saw the police photograph of the suspect on Facebook. They thought they recognised her as a former neighbour who lived close to the hos- pital in Trois-Rivieres, northwest of Montreal.
They headed to what they thought was her neighbourhood and spotted the red car parked outside a house. Police kicked the door open minutes later and emerged with Victoria.
On Facebook, McMahon credited ‘‘four wonderful young people’’ and thanked all who had shared the story. ‘‘Know that this is what has saved our little Victoria. Each click, each share, made the difference,’’ she wrote.
The suspect is undergoing psychological evaluation.