HARTFORD, Conn. — A North Carolina woman who raised a child stolen 23 years ago from a New York hospital surrendered to authorities on a probation-violation charge Sunday, and she was to appear in federal court to face kidnapping charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Ann Pettway surrendered Sunday morning to the FBI and Bridgeport police on a warrant from North Carolina, where she’s on probation because of a conviction for attempted embezzlement, FBI supervisory special agent William Reiner said. She turned herself in days after a widely publicized reunion between the child she raised, now an adult, and her biological mother.
Pettway received two years of probation last June after she took items from a store where she worked, which is considered embezzlement under North Carolina law, state correction spokeswoman Pamela Walker said. Under terms of her probation, she wasn’t allowed to leave the state.
Department of Correction officials there tried repeatedly to contact her after finding out investigators wanted to question her in the 1987 abduction of Carlina White.
Carlina was 19 days old when she disappeared from Harlem Hospital. No suspects were identified.
Carlina is now 23 and has been living under the name Nejdra Nance. She said she had long suspected Pettway wasn’t her biological mother because she could never provide her with a birth certificate and because she didn’t look like anyone else in Pettway’s family.
Nance told the New York Post in an interview posted Thursday that reuniting with her family was like a dream.
“I’m so happy,” she said. “It’s a funny feeling because everything’s brand new. It’s like being born again.”
