Baby kidnapping suspect posed as nurse By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press Writer
55 minutes ago
LUBBOCK, Texas - A woman accused of kidnapping a newborn baby from its home had posed as a nurse in repeated visits to the mother's hospital room the previous week, authorities said.
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Police were still trying to identify the woman Monday and were searching for the 5-day-old newborn, Priscilla Nicole Maldonado, who was taken from her home Sunday afternoon.
"We're obviously still canvassing the neighborhood and talking to everyone we possibly can," Lubbock Police Lt. Roy Bassett said. The infant has jaundice and needs medical care.
Authorities believe that the woman who took Priscilla has local ties but that she wasn't an employee of the hospital where she befriended Erica Ysasaga after the young mother gave birth, Bassett said. When Ysasaga was discharged, the woman asked for her address, saying she had a swing and some clothes for the baby.
She visited the family Sunday afternoon and told the mother that she wanted to put the newborn in a baby pageant.
"I said, 'No, my baby is sick. She can't be out in public,'" Ysasaga told KAMC-TV. "She said they would pay me $100 and my baby would win stuff."
The woman then said she had relatives on the next block and wanted to show them the baby. Ysasaga said she would go with her, but the woman disappeared with the newborn while Ysasaga was momentarily distracted.
"My son ran ahead of me so I tried to reach over and grab him and when I did that, I turned around, just like that, my baby was gone," she said.
In trying to gain Ysasaga's confidence, the woman gave Ysasaga a driver's license number and Social Security number "so that you have some confidence that you know who I am," Bassett said the woman told Ysasaga. But neither number matched with the name the woman had given.
Police were working with the family to make a sketch of the woman and checking surveillance video from the hospital.
The woman had been wearing medical scrubs when she visited Ysasaga's hospital room, but authorities don't believe she was a University Medical Center employee.
"To the best of our knowledge, it's not an employee of our hospital," said hospital spokesman Greg Bruce. "The description of what the employee was wearing, how the employee was acting while they visited with the mother in the hospital is not consistent with any of our staff."
The suspect had visited Ysasaga daily while the mother and baby were in the hospital, asking questions about the baby and sometimes retrieving towels, the family said.
"She was concerned all the time about my baby so I thought she was a nurse," Ysasaga said.
