UPDATE: snatched baby is found
3-day-old Lucas was found with a 17-year-old girl in her appartment in the Nancy area
THE baby snatched from a Nancy hospital has been recovered. He is thought to be unharmed.
Lucas, aged three days, was found with a 17-year-old girl in her flat in the southern suburbs of Nancy, along with her partner and another couple – all of whom are being questioned by the police.
Police said the woman at first claimed the child was hers.
Nancy public prosecutor Thomas Pinson hailed the “determined” efforts of police who used video camera images from a tram near the hospital to make a photofit and then tracked down a trail of witnesses.
The suspect was finally identified after neighbours referred to a woman who they had not known to be pregnant, but who had suddenly had a child.
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AN APPEAL for witnesses has been made after a woman posing as a hospital staff member is thought to have snatched a baby from a hospital in Nancy.
According to Europe 1 a two-day-old baby is understood to have been kidnapped from the maternity hospital in the eastern city at around 21.30 last night.
The suspect is said to have entered a maternity ward where two young mothers were with their newborn children.
She reportedly asked one of them if she could take her baby to the nursery for the night, but the woman refused. The woman is then said to have taken the child of the other mother, who was asleep.
The mother realised her baby was missing when she awoke and gave the alert around 23.00. The baby is called Lucas and was born on Sunday.
Police are looking for a young woman aged around her late teens to 20-years-old, who had her hair pulled back and with a fringe at the front. She was wearing a jacket, shirt and dark trousers and a scarf and was carrying a dark-coloured travelling bag which would have been big enough to put the baby in.
Anyone with information is being asked to call the local police on 03 83 17 29 44.
There are on average two babies snatched from maternity wards in France a year, according to official figures.
In August a baby was taken from a hospital in Marseille before being found the next day. The alleged kidnapper was a 19-year-old woman.
Photo: Google Maps
