NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Police say a kidnapped infant has been found safe in Alabama, and a woman suspected of abducting the baby has been arrested.
Police said the child was found Friday night in good health at a home in Ardmore.
They said the break in the case came as a task force of local, state and federal investigators developed strong information on a car seen at the kidnap scene and at a store.
Yair Anthony Carillo was taken from his home Tuesday, just four days after he was born to 30-year-old Maria Gurrolla. She told police a heavyset white woman with blond hair arrived at her home posing as an immigration agent, attacked her with a knife and took the boy.
Cathy Nahirny, a senior analyst for infant abduction cases at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said there have been at least two other recent cases where an abductor used the same ploy.
“We need to get the word out to our immigrant communities,” Nahirny said. “Anybody that claims they are from federal law enforcement agencies, you have the right and you should ask for photo identification.”
Nahirny said the profile of an infant abductor is typically a woman who may be married or living with someone and may be faking a pregnancy in a desperate attempt to improve her relationship.
In March, Amalia Tabata Pereira was accused of taking a 2-month-old girl from a woman at a health clinic in Plant City, Fla., east of Tampa. Police said she told the baby’s parents she was an immigration official and that they were going to be deported. She was arrested a day later and turned the baby over to authorities.
Abductions of infants by strangers are rare, with only nine reported cases so far this year and five last year, according to the missing child center.
Nahirny said immigrant families have been targets of child abductions because of the assumption they will not tell police.
Gurrolla is Latina, but her immigration status isn’t clear. She was stabbed several times in the neck and chest and was released from the hospital Thursday.
Until the 1990s, most infant abductions occurred in hospitals, but with improved security in maternity wards, it has become more common for infants to be taken from homes.
