A former councillor has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a baby at Mpumalanga’s Ermelo hospital exactly 10 days after she was born, the province’s police said on Saturday.
The baby, which was born at 9am on February 16 but kidnapped almost 10 hours later, was found at Boschfontein near Komatipoort on South Africa’s border with Mozambique, Captain Abie Khoabane said.
He said the baby, whose 17-year-old mother travelled about 50km to the hospital from her Hendrina home, was not hurt when she was found.
The woman allegedly kidnapped the baby from her mother’s hands by pretending to be a nurse who was going to feed the girl. The woman was wearing a uniform similar to that of the hospital’s nursing staff when she kidnapped the baby.
The woman has three children — aged 19, 23 and 25 — with another man, but wanted to ”impress” her boyfriend. The woman and the boyfriend had been together for six years, Khoabane said.
Before the baby was found, four detectives, including Khoabane, travelled from Ermelo to Tembisa near Johannesburg, and from the Gauteng township to Boschfontein.
He said they left Ermelo at 1.30am, arrived in Tembisa at 6am and left for Boschfontein immediately. They arrived in Boschfontein at about 5pm and arrested the woman.
They could not find the woman in Tembisa where her boyfriend worked. They then travelled to Boschfontein — the boyfriend’s place of origin, Khoabane said.
The woman was a councillor for the Ermelo/Mayflower area in 1999. She is expected to appear in the Ermelo Magistrate’s Court on Monday. — Sapa