Eighteen years ago, a woman posing as a nurse kidnapped a newborn girl from a Florida hospital.
After almost two decades of searching, police finally located the missing girl living with her kidnapper — who the girl assumed was her mother — under a different name in South Carolina, reports The Washington Post.
In 1998, a 16-year-old Shanara Mobley handed her newborn daughter Kamiyah to a woman in scrubs who said the baby needed to be checked for a fever at UF Health Jacksonville — at the time known as University Medical Center. The family called 911 shortly after Kamiyah was taken and the hospital went on lock down. Authorities stopped buses and trains and informed the local airport of a missing baby, but Kamiyah was not found.
The kidnapping made national headlines and sparked exhaustive search efforts among authorities, as well as several appearances on "America's Most Wanted." The Mobley family sued the hospital, earning a settlement that prompted many hospitals across central Florida to tighten security measures for newborns, reported the Orlando Sentinel in 2000.
In 2016, several tips led police to Walterboro, S.C., where they found an 18-year-old woman who had the same birthday as Kamiyah and fake identification papers. A DNA test on Friday confirmed the young woman was in fact Kamiyah Mobley.
Kamiyah "had an inkling, beginning probably a couple months ago, that she may have been involved in this in some way," said Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams, according to the report.
She had been living with Gloria Williams, who was arrested Friday for charges of kidnapping and interference with custody. Kamiyah was reunited with her biological parents on Saturday, reports CNN.