US woman gets jail for snatching baby in '87
Source: Agencies |
August 1, 2012, Wednesday
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AN American woman who snatched a newborn from a hospital more than two decades ago and raised the child as her own has been sentenced to 12 years' jail.
Ann Pettway, 50, pleaded guilty to kidnapping in February and offered details of the 1987 kidnapping. She said she took a train from her Connecticut home to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up 3-week-old Carlina White, who had been brought to the emergency room with a high fever.
As part of Pettway's plea bargain, prosecutors recommended 10 to 12 1/2 years in prison. But they raised the suggested sentence to 20 years last week, saying the Probation Department had unearthed new facts about the case that made a stiffer sentence more appropriate. The judge handed down the 12-year sentence on Monday in US District Court in Manhattan, New York.
Prosecutors said it appeared that Pettway, of Raleigh, North Carolina, kidnapped the ailing infant because she wanted a baby "and constructed a web of lies that denied the child the truth about her family for 23 years."
As Pettway admitted her guilt, Carlina's birth mother, Joy White, quietly cried in the courtroom gallery.
The case was solved by Carlina herself.
As she grew up in Connecticut as Nejdra Nance, the girl became increasingly suspicious of her own identity. Pettway ultimately told her a part-truth. She admitted she was someone else's daughter but claimed she had been willingly given away by a drug addict.
Carlina White said she browsed the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for clues to her identity. After matching a photo of herself with one on the site, she tracked down her true mother and they reunited last January.
Ann Pettway, 50, pleaded guilty to kidnapping in February and offered details of the 1987 kidnapping. She said she took a train from her Connecticut home to Harlem Hospital, where she scooped up 3-week-old Carlina White, who had been brought to the emergency room with a high fever.
As part of Pettway's plea bargain, prosecutors recommended 10 to 12 1/2 years in prison. But they raised the suggested sentence to 20 years last week, saying the Probation Department had unearthed new facts about the case that made a stiffer sentence more appropriate. The judge handed down the 12-year sentence on Monday in US District Court in Manhattan, New York.
Prosecutors said it appeared that Pettway, of Raleigh, North Carolina, kidnapped the ailing infant because she wanted a baby "and constructed a web of lies that denied the child the truth about her family for 23 years."
As Pettway admitted her guilt, Carlina's birth mother, Joy White, quietly cried in the courtroom gallery.
The case was solved by Carlina herself.
As she grew up in Connecticut as Nejdra Nance, the girl became increasingly suspicious of her own identity. Pettway ultimately told her a part-truth. She admitted she was someone else's daughter but claimed she had been willingly given away by a drug addict.
Carlina White said she browsed the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for clues to her identity. After matching a photo of herself with one on the site, she tracked down her true mother and they reunited last January.
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