CANADIAN STOLEN BABY FOUND BY FOUR TEENAGERS ON FACEBOOK

MONTREAL, Canada - A group of four young Quebec residents helped rescue a newborn baby after receiving information on Facebook about the missing child after it was kidnapped Monday from a hospital maternity ward in Montreal, Canada by a woman dressed as a nurse.

Quebec police issued an amber alert after the day-old baby girl was taken at around 7pm from Ville-Marie hospital in Trois-Rivieres when a woman entered the ward where mother Melissa McMahon was staying under the pretext of weighing the baby.

The mother started worrying because the nurse did not leave through the usual door. Within minutes, she realised that her child had been abducted and police were called.

The alert, which included a security-camera photo of the suspect and a description of her car, a red Toyota Yaris with a “Bébé à bord” (Baby on Board) sign on the rear window, was spread across mainstream and social media.

• The group of four teens – Melizanne Bergeron, her twin sister Sharelle Bergeron, and friends Marc-Andre Coté and Charlène Plante came across the kidnapping post on Facebook after it was posted by the missing baby’s father Simon Boisclair. Charlene immediately recognised the woman as her former neighbour.
• The teens then spotted the vehicle described in the amber alert parked outside the woman’s house and contacted the police.

Police arrested the 21-year-old suspect at her home and found the baby safe just three hours after the abduction. The young sleuths were asked to accompany the police to the hospital, where the baby’s parents were anxiously waiting.

The authorities said: “It was really a story of the social media machine getting into working order, because after the amber alert was issued it was just passed around everywhere.”

The mother of the baby also wrote on a Facebook that it was social media that helped save the baby. 

Source: Reuters.