‘Momma’ charged with stealing daughter at birth
>> WALTERBORO: Neighbours knew them for years as a church-going mother and her polite teenage daughter before police swarmed Gloria Williams’ home in this small, quiet South Carolina city.
Ms Williams, 51, was arrested on kidnapping charges. Then came the real shocker: Police identified the victim as the 18-yearold woman Ms Williams had raised as her daughter. Investigators said DNA analysis proved she had been stolen as an infant from a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida.
“She wasn’t an abused child or a child who got in trouble,” a stunned Joseph Jenkins said of the young woman who lived across the street. “But she grew up with a lie for 18 years.”
She grew up as Alexis Manigo, but has now learned she was born as Kamiyah Mobley.
Tesha Stephens, a cousin of Ms Willams’, said the young woman had much to think about.
“She’s probably going to have to take this day-by-day,” Ms Stephens told reporters.
Ms Mobley got to spend a few emotional moments with Ms Williams, who is also charged with interference with custody, after her arrest. She cried “Momma” through the caged window of a security door after Ms Williams waived extradition to Florida, according to WXJT-TV.
Meanwhile, the young woman’s birth family cried “tears of joy” after a detective told them their baby had been found. Within hours on Friday, they were able to reconnect over FaceTime.
“She looks just like her daddy,” her paternal grandmother, Velma Aiken of Jacksonville, said after they were able to see each other for the first time. “She act like she been talking to us all the time. She told us she’d be here soon to see us.”
Ms Mobley was eight hours old when she was stolen by a woman posing as a nurse at University Medical Centre. A massive search ensued, with helicopters circling the hospital and the city on high alert.
Some months ago, the young woman “had an inclination” she may have been kidnapped, the sheriff said. Authorities didn’t say why she suspected this.
The case broke thanks to a tip received by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said Robert Lowery, a centre vice-president. He would not say from whom the tip came.
But the centre soon reached out to the cold case detectives at the sheriff’s office, and Ms Mobley provided a swab of her cheek for DNA analysis that proved the match, the sheriff said.
News moved quickly through the community of about 5,100 people early on Friday after police cars swarmed Ms Williams’ home.
“At the fish market, the hair dresser, the gas station, they’re all talking about it,” said Ruben Boatwright, who said he’s known Ms Williams for about 15 years.
Ms Williams also worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ hospital in Charleston, and lead the youth programme at a Methodist church, she said.
“She’s very intelligent, smart as a whip,” Mr Boatwright said. “All I can say are good things about her.”