Holidaying mum: Woman tried to snatch my toddler
A BRITISH mother told yesterday how a woman made a brazen attempt to snatch her toddler while they were in their Majorca holiday hotel.
Company director Blaise Deacon says she had 23-month-old daughter Darcie on her lap when a woman reached over her shoulder and tried to pick her up.
But she clung on to her daughter after the woman told her she was ‘taking her’.
The unidentified female ran off to a waiting car outside the three-star HYB Eurocalas Hotel in Calas de Mallorca, on the east coast. Spanish detectives are investigating.
Miss Deacon posted on Facebook: ‘As most of you know, we are now on holiday in Spain. It’s now day five and on our second day we had the worst thing happen to us. Our 23-month-old daughter was nearly snatched from us.
‘A lady put her arms around her telling us that she was taking her. But I held on tight as my sister told her “No”. When the woman realised she wasn’t getting her she took off running.’ She added: ‘Please be aware on your holidays! Anyone can enter the hotels.’
Miss Deacon, 27, who runs her own cleaning firm, told the Daily Mail she had been sitting in the entertainment area of the hotel complex when she was approached by the woman, who had dark olive skin and ash blonde dyed hair.
Her partner George Dixon was elsewhere. ‘At first I thought she might be another holidaymaker at the resort who was just being helpful and offering to hold Darcie for a second,’ she said. ‘ She reached over my left shoulder and had her hands on Darcie’s waist.’
Miss Deacon, who lives in Biggin Hill, Kent, handed her daughter to her sister Kealy and ran after the woman. ‘The car was already driving away by the time I got there so I don’t know if she was driving or if someone was waiting in the car,’ she added. She said that the hotel staff refused to call police ‘as it would make the hotel look bad’. She contacted them herself and was interviewed by officers took CCTV recordings from the hotel.
‘From what we understand they have a match of the suspect and are now looking for her,’ she said. ‘We didn’t change hotels because with the police involved we felt safer. But I turned to Facebook to warn people coming out or already on holiday here.’ Miss Deacon, who returned to the UK yesterday, said she was ‘possibly Eastern European’ but might have been Spanish. Friends reacted with horror online. One wrote: ‘I’d have been punching ten bells outta her the minute she put her hands on my child.’ Spain’s National Police in Majorca confirmed officers had attended a hotel following a complaint from a British holidaymaker. A spokesman said there were no witnesses and CCTV had not identified a suspect.
Meanwhile a hotel receptionist last night denied that there had been an attempted abduction.