This composite image shows a photo of Kamiyah Mobley, an infant baby girl who was kidnapped by a woman, Gloria Williams, seen in separate sketches first provided by police in 1998 during the initial search. AP/PTI |
Walterboro, South Carolina:
Neighbours knew them for years as a church-going mother and her polite teenage
daughter before police swarmed Gloria Williams’ home in this small, quiet South
Carolina city.
Williams, 51, was arrested on
kidnapping charges. Then came the real shocker: Police identified the victim as
the 18-year-old woman Williams had raised as her daughter. Investigators said
DNA analysis proved she had been stolen as an infant from a hospital in Jacksonville,
Florida.
“She wasn’t an abused child or a
child who got in trouble,” a stunned Joseph Jenkins said of the young woman who
lived across the street. “But she grew up with a lie for 18 years.”
She grew up as Alexis Manigo, but
has now learned she was born as Kamiyah Mobley. Jacksonville Sheriff Mike
Williams described her on Friday as being in good health but emotionally
overwhelmed.
Tesha Stephens, a cousin of
Willams’, said the young woman had much to think about.
“She’s probably going to have to
take this day-by-day,” Stephens told reporters outside Williams’ home.
Mobley got to spend a few emotional
moments with Williams, who is also charged with interference with custody,
after her arrest. She cried “Momma” through the caged window of a security door
after Williams waived extradition to Florida, according to WXJT-TV, which
posted a video online (http://bit.ly/2j9vRO5).
Meanwhile, the young woman’s birth
family cried “tears of joy” after a detective told them their baby had been
found. Within hours on Friday, they were able to reconnect over FaceTime.
“She looks just like her daddy,”
her paternal grandmother, Velma Aiken of Jacksonville, told The Associated
Press after they were able to see each other for the first time. “She act like
she been talking to us all the time. She told us she’d be here soon to see us.”
Mobley was only eight hours old
when she was taken from her young mother by a woman posing as a nurse at
University Medical Centre. A massive search ensued, with helicopters circling
the hospital and the city on high alert. Thousands of tips came in over the
years, but she had disappeared.
Some months ago, the young woman
“had an inclination” that she may have been kidnapped, the sheriff said.
Authorities didn’t say why she suspected this.
The case broke thanks to a tip
received by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said Robert
Lowery, a centre vice-president. He would not say from whom the tip came.
But the centre soon reached out to
the cold case detectives at the sheriff’s office, and Mobley provided a swab of
her cheek for DNA analysis that proved the match, the sheriff said.
“This was something brand new to
all of us,” said Stephens, Williams’ cousin.
The centre has tracked 308 infant
abductions since 1983 by non-family members in the US Of those cases, 12 were
still missing at the end of last month. That’s now one number smaller.
The woman has been provided with
counseling, the sheriff said. Meanwhile, Aiken is thrilled to know that they
can speak with each other as much as they want.
“I always prayed, ‘Don’t let me die
before I see my grandbaby’,” said Aiken. “My prayer was answered.”
The family never forgot the little
girl ripped from her mother’s arms that day in 1998.
Her mother, Shanara Mobley, told
the Florida Times-Union newspaper on the 10th anniversary of the kidnapping
that on every one of Kamiyah’s birthdays, she wrapped a piece of birthday cake
in foil and stuck it in her freezer.
“It’s stressful to wake up every
day, knowing that your child is out there and you have no way to reach her or
talk to her,” Mobley told the paper in 2008.
News moved quickly through the
community of about 5,100 people early on Friday after police cars swarmed Williams’
home. Jenkins said he awoke to see officers searching the house and the shed
around back.
“At the fish market, the hair
dresser, the gas station, they’re all talking about it,” said Ruben Boatwright,
who said he’s known Williams for about 15 years.
Lakeshia Jenkins, Joseph’s wife,
said Williams and the girl would often come over for cookouts in the yard, or
join their family at a nearby water park. Kamiyah seemed to be well cared for,
and “Ms. Williams, she seemed like a normal person,” Jenkins said.
“She went to work, came back here
and went to church every Sunday,” she said.
Williams also worked for the
Department of Veterans Affairs’ hospital in Charleston, volunteered in the area
for Habitat for Humanity and lead the youth program at a Methodist church, she
said.
“She’s very intelligent, smart as a
whip,” Boatwright said. “All I can say are good things about her.”
Culled from Gulf News
Culled from Gulf News
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