Newborn Abducted From Lubbock, Texas, Hospital

[Maddy McCall]

Woman Poses As Hospital Employee

POSTED: 10:29 am EST March 10, 2007
UPDATED: 12:28 pm EST March 10, 2007

A newborn baby is missing after police say she was abducted from a Lubbock, Texas, hospital.

The 3-day-old black baby girl, Mychael Darthard-Dawodu, was kidnapped Saturday morning from the hospital by someone posing as a hospital employee, police said.

Mychael is jaundiced and is in need of medical attention.

Gwen Stafford, Senior Vice President of Covenant Medical Center, said that early Saturday morning, there was an individual posing as a hospital employee. That person entered the victim's room more than one time, took the infant and left the hospital with the baby, Stafford said. The baby was in the room with the mother, and was under a light because she was jaundiced.

"This individual went into the room dressed as a hospital employee, in scrubs, and said the baby needed to be returned to the nursery. The mother said, 'No, she's rooming with me,'" Stafford said.

Stafford said that the woman came back and said the baby must go to the nursery. That's when the mother allowed the woman to take her baby.

snip/

Police said the suspected kidnapper is a black woman in her early 20s, who is about 5 foot 3 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds. They said she has a round face and black hair that has been dyed auburn. The suspected kidnapper was last seen wearing a pink hospital scrub shirt with purple and blue flowers and blue scrub plants. She was carrying a tan purse, wearing a blue or gray jacket with fur around the hood, police said.

MORE: http://www.wxii12.com/news/11220614/detail.html#

The baby:

The suspect:

[annabanana]

1. 1) heartbreakingly sad

2) Tragedy and consequences of tragedy confined to the immediately effected persons
3) involves adorable baby (with picture)
4) getting the "wall to wall" coverage treatment on the cables

=

less coverage on more generally important stories

[Maddy McCall]

4. What exactly are you saying? That this story deserves no covereage...

because discussing the war or the debate boycott is more important?

Do you think that people aren't capable of processing more than one story at a time?

Inhumane. Purely inhumane.

[annabanana]

5. Of course not.. I have no problem with there being coverage

of this story. The mechanics of an Amber Alert demand immediate coverage.

Was my #1 comment not that it is "heartbreakingly sad"?

[Maddy McCall]

6. That disclaimer didn't blur your closing swipe...

"less coverage on more generally important stories."

I think the story is important, or I would not have posted it. What is important to each of us is relative. And some of us can absorb more than one news story at a time.

[Midlodemocrat]

7. I think to the people involved that this is THE most important story.

And, it's not a blond girl who has gone missing. Isn't that one of the things DUers were bitching about recently? That people of color aren't represented fairly when such tragedy befalls them?

My posting and compassion for this family doesn't take away from my heartbreak about the war.

[I Have A Dream]

16. Yes, I was very happy to see that it was given the coverage that it was...

given the fact that this child is an African-American child. Usually, these situations don't get the same coverage as a white child.

[seriousstan]

13. I guess only the stories about, or of interest to, you are important.

Everyone else are so self absorbed.

[Midlodemocrat]

2. Gosh, this is awful.

When I had my eldest, a woman purporting to be a nurse came into the room to take her back to the nursery.

She didn't have any identification on, so we said no, that my husband would take her back. I just had a bad feeling.

Turns out, she was a nurse, but those bad feelings I have are often right.


Prayers for a good ending to this. That mom must be heartsick.

[Maddy McCall]

8. You have to pay attention to those feelings...

The abducted baby's mother had that feeling...she said NO at first.

Maybe she thought, "I'm just being paranoid," when she finally decided to let the "nurse" take the baby. And the "nurse" took the baby at 1:30 AM, when I'm sure not many people were around.

We are discussing this in the Texas forum. One of the posters has worked in several hospitals in Lubbock...he said that a nearby hospital has a monitor that they attach to the baby's umbilical cord that alerts if the baby leaves the hospital. That sounds like a good system...all hospitals should have it.

[Midlodemocrat]

9. Gavin DeBecker's The Gift of Fear. Every parent should read it.

Fantastic book about denying your inner subsconscience when it comes to protecting your children.

Something doesn't 'feel' right, but we don't want to look stupid or paranoid, so we go along with it. When, in reality, our subconscience has picked up some clues that our conscious mind is too busy to focus on and we should absolutely be listening.

Oprah did a segment on him a few years back with a woman who said her subconscious was just 'screaming at her' about this guy who approached her and her children in their yard. He said he was there to do lawn work, but her mind kept screaming 'get in the house, get in the house' and when she turned to go in with the girls, he attacked her. She fought him off and damaged the truck so that he was very easy for the police to spot.


Why did her subconscious go so berserk? He said he was there to do lawn work, but he had no equipment in the truck.

[Maddy McCall]

11. It's happened to me before, though not imminent danger as the situation you described.

My son wanted to spend the night with a friend. Begged to spend the night for weeks. I felt like something was wrong. Even though the boy's parents probably interpreted my NO as "She thinks her son is too good to stay with us..."

Two years later, the mother and father were divorced. The mother was doing heavy drugs and having strange men in the house for sex (with her kids there). I didn't know any of this at the time that my son wanted to spend the night with his friend, but I had a feeling that something wasn't right. Maybe nothing would have happened, but I would never want my kid in that situation.

[mitchum]

20. I also recommend DeBecker's "The Gift of Fear" (and all of his work) n/t

[MADem]

3. I dunno. Why does this keep happening? What's the problem with security?

Will it come to the point where, if the person doesn't 'say the secret word' that the mother has to say no, or does the mother have to drag the kid to the nursery herself?

[tammywammy]

15. Does this happen a lot?

I can't remember the last time I saw a baby stolen from hospital story.

When my SIL had both of my nephews, their wrist bracelets had some security code link in it. Somehow it was set up that you couldn't take the baby out of the area, the doors would shut on you.

[MADem]

17. Often enough that you'd think they'd put buzzers in the diapers, or something.

It really isn't a moon landing, it's securing a child. No wonder many mothers prefer to get the hell out of there ASAP.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Missing 5-day-old girl found in Texas

Monday, June 5, 2006; Posted: 11:35 p.m. EDT (03:35 GMT)

Priscilla Nicole Maldonado was kidnapped Sunday, four days after her birth, police said.
(CNN) -- An ailing 5-day-old girl, snatched from her mother by a woman who had posed as a hospital worker, has been found and is being evaluated at University Medical Center, hospital spokesman Greg Bruce said.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/05/missing.baby/

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=5061947
Newborn abducted from Gary hospital Child returned to mother
By Dan Ponce
February 23, 2007 - A suspect in the abduction of a newborn at a Gary, Ind. hospital is in police custody, officials said. The baby is back with the mother.

Police say the baby's father, who did not have permission to take the 1-day-old child, took the infant from his mother's room at the Northlake Campus of Methodist Hospital while she was in the bathroom. Police say she had just told the father the child tested positive for an illegal substance.

http://www.health24.com/child/Parenting/833-852,39432.asp
Two babies were abducted recently - one was taken from Coronation Hospital, and another was snatched from home in Khayelitsha by a woman pretending to be a social worker.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-baby5mar05,1,7226548.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

Nine months after an El Monte woman allegedly abducted a Mexican national's newborn and threatened to turn the woman in to immigration officials if she reported the crime, authorities reunited the mother with her son early Sunday, officials said.

El Monte police arrested Artemia Hernandez, 44, the mother's former roommate, on suspicion of child abduction and concealment.

In May, Hernandez bullied the boy's 20-year-old mother into handing over her week-old son, police said. Hernandez convinced her former roommate that the infant could be taken from her because of the young woman's illegal status, according to law enforcement.

Hernandez persuaded the woman to list Hernandez as the baby's mother on his Los Angeles County birth certificate and on hospital documents, police said.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20070222233058238C455332

By Linda Mbongwa and Karyn Maughan

Nothemba Gweje had held her newborn son for only a few hours - and hadn't even named him - when the infant was snatched from hospital.

The abduction of Gweje's baby a week ago from Coronation Hospital in Newclare, western Johannesburg, has led the Gauteng health department to ask all provincial hospital chief executives to jack up their security.

But that provides no solace for the distraught 24-year-old mother, who also has a four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter.

[rainbow4321]

19. No security system is fool proof, unfortunately

It takes an alert human to serve as the best defense.
Our facility has these little, hard plastic devices that slips on the id bracelet, the id bracelet is then put on the child's ankle. Sounds good but I cannot tell you how many times we find the plastic things in the laundry, a parents calls us and says "hey, the plastic thing fell off of my baby's foot and it got left in my bed (not noticed til after the kid was brought back to the nursery).

Our nursery is a locked unit, not even the parents can enter the room. They buzz a loudspeaker, we ask their name and only after we go look at their id bracelet to we release the baby to them.

NOW, the real problem is, the womens/post-partum unit is NOT a locked down unit. ANYone can come into the hospital, get off the elevator and go to the mom's floor. Yeah, the nurses' station is right by the elevator but there is no confrontation, no "who are you here to see", people just walk on by. Until the post partum units get stricter visitation, these abductions are going to keep happening, unfortunately.

[rainbow4321]

18. This is the second baby abduction in Lubbock in less then 1 yr

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/031107dntswbabykidnap.dbe0f3.html

The abduction was the second in Lubbock in less than a year. In June a woman in medical scrubs began visiting a mother's room at a different hospital, asking questions about the days-old baby and then offering to drop by their home with a swing and some baby clothes, the mother told police then.

The woman visited the mother's home a few days later and fled with the newborn while the mother was momentarily distracted with her 2-year-old son.

A tip led to the woman's whereabouts the next day and she took police to an apartment complex carport where she had left the 5-day-old girl in a car seat in 100-plus degree weather.

[nitestar41]

10. I do wonder about the Security at the Hospital.

When I had my daughter last year they had put a band on her that if she was taken to close to the door an alarm would go off. There was only on door available for leaving the ward and it took you right past the nurses station. I admit there were things that the hospital may have done that I didn't approve of, this is not the place to get into that, but they had pretty good security. The hospital would not allow anyone who they were not told by the mother that they were OK into the ward, my family received 2 swipe cards to get in and out of the ward if anyone had asked to visit me they would call me and ask if it was OK. They also made it clear if a nurse did not have her ID visible I did not have to send my daughter with her.

I hope they find this little girl for her mother above all else... I can't imagine how I would have felt or what I'd have done if something had happened to my daughter while we were there. The woman who took this child should be persecuted to the full extent of the law. Also I certainly hope that the hospital has learned that they need to set up better security.

[Maddy McCall]

12. Welcome to DU, nitestar.

I agree with everything you said. Yes, it seems like security in OB wards should be mandatory in every hospital. With all of these stories, new mothers should consider security when choosing a hospital.

I can't imagine what I would do, either. I'd have to be sedated...I don't think I could function at all if my baby went missing. :(

Welcome to DU. Hope you stay around. :hi:

[WiseButAngrySara]

14. KNR .. And here's another from Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/461861...

Lubbock baby abducted from hospital today

Missing & Exploited Children Web site LUBBOCK — A woman posing as a medical worker kidnapped a 3-day-old infant from a hospital early today, police said.
Mychael Darthard-Dawodu was last seen at 1:20 a.m. at Covenant Lakeside Hospital when a woman wearing a flower print scrub shirt, light blue scrub pants and a tan or gray winter coat with fur on the hood took her and drove off in a pickup, police said.
Hospital surveillance video showed the woman with the jacket hood pulled around her head and holding a purse as she walked through the lobby.
Lt. Scott Hudgens said the baby was jaundiced but he did not have any other information on her medical condition.
The woman may have had a male accomplice, Hudgens said.
"At this point we don't have any reason to believe that the family knew the suspect," Hudgens said.
The abductor went into the mother's room several times before the baby was taken, said Gwen Stafford, senior vice president of Covenant Health System. The woman told the mother the baby needed treatment, Stafford said.
"I think there was more than one attempt," Stafford said. "I'm trying to verify if it was two or three times."
Per hospital policy, the newborn was wearing a monitoring device, but it wasn't clear if the device was GPS enabled.
``We have a very good and sophisticated security'' system, she added. The mother is ``distraught, and like us, praying for the safe return of her little girl,'' Stafford said.
The suspect was described as a black woman, at least 20 years old, 5-foot-3 with auburn hair.
The getaway vehicle was a red Dodge pickup with black trim and dark, tinted windows, police said.
Mychael was born on Wednesday. She weighs 5 pounds, has brown eyes, black hair and is black.
Anyone with information should contact the Lubbock Police Department at 806-775-2778 or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

[youngdem]

21. What the hell does Jeff Goldblum want with a yellow baby?