Baby Girl Kamiyah Mobley when she was kidnapped 18 years ago
A newborn baby girl who was kidnapped from an American hospital 18 years ago has been found, alive and well.
The baby now a teenager was stolen by a woman pretending to be a nurse in a Florida hospital.
The mystery of Kamiyah Mobley became an American sensation when she was taken from her mother’s arms at the University Medical Center in Jacksonville, Florida in July 1998.
Jacksonville police have since revealed the teen found out on Friday morning that the woman who has raised her in Walterboro, South Carolina, her whole life is not her real mother. Gloria Williams, 51, has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and interference with custody.
Kamiyah’s mother, Shanara grieving in 199.
Kamiyah’s father Craig Aiken who went to jail for impregnating Shanara when she was 15
Williams had suffered a miscarriage about a week before she drove the three hours from South Carolina to Florida and abducted baby Kamiyah, Walterboro Live reports
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said she will be extradited back to Florida and is being held without bond.
Kamiyah Mobley and the woman she thought was her mother
Her fake mother, Gloria Williams, now arrested
The twist yesterday was that the rescued girl took to Facebook to defend Williams on Friday as news of the woman’s arrest spread.
‘My mother raised me with everything I needed and most of all everything I wanted,’ she wrote. ‘My mother is no felon.’
The sensational news closed a cold case that accumulated more than 2,500 leads and tips and captivated both the city and the country for more than a decade.
It was a tip last year that led Jacksonville police to South Carolina, where they found an 18-year-old woman with Kamiyah Mobley’s birth date but a different name. They soon found out that fraudulent documents had been used to establish her identity.
A DNA sample from the teen was taken and submitted to a crime lab, where it was matched with the original newborn DNA taken the day Kamiyah was born.
The test confirmed the teen was, in fact, Kamiyah.
Sheriff Williams revealed that the name the teen has used for the last 18 years will not be revealed.
‘She’s going to need time and assistance to process all of this, so we are respecting her privacy.’
Sheriff Williams said Kamiyah appears to be in ‘good health’ and a ‘normal 18-year-old woman’.
The case took over the county, where women who matched the sketch were stopped in local grocery stores and babies’ footprints were compared to those taken from Kamiyah when she was born.
A $250,000 reward was offer and Kamiyah’s story was told on CNN and America’s Most Wanted.
Craig was in jail at the time of her kidnapping on a drug charge, according to WJXT.
Her disappearance led to even more time behind bars when Aiken, 19 at the time, revealed he was the father – and that Kamiyah had been conceived when Shanara was 15.
Aiken pleaded guilty and spent five months in prison, wondering if he would ever see the baby daughter he never had the chance to meet.
Shanara, who used to cut a piece of cake and put it in the freezer for each one of Kamiyah’s birthdays, received a $1.5million settlement in 2000 after suing the hospital.
As the years passed the mother said she woke up every day knowing her firstborn was still out there – but that there was no way to reach or talk to her.
‘I wonder, ‘What does she like? What kind of food? What kind of colors? How smart is she? Does she have long pretty hair? Does she have my eyelashes?” Shanara said in 2008.
Now, she may finally have the chance to find out.
‘I always hoped and prayed this day would happen. I always felt she was alive. I always felt she would find us,’ said Craig.
‘Now we have the rest of our lives together.’
Read more in Mail Online