A 16-hour-old baby that was kidnapped from a Canadian hospital, has been rescued after a Facebook user recognised the suspect from an alert that went viral on social media.
The police also managed to arrest the abductor from her apartment along with the vehicle that was used for kidnapping the newborn baby, Victoria, reported BBC.
Newborn infant Victoria was abducted from hospital in in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, by a young woman disguised in a nurse’s uniform. Alerts by the local police, featuring details of the suspect’s vehicle, together with a security image of her, went viral on Facebook and Twitter.
A Facebook user thought that she recognised her former neighbor in the picture and decided to drive, together with three friends, to the former neighbor’s apartment building. They found the wanted car parked outside and called the police.
One of the friends, Mélizanne Bergeron, told Canadian public broadcaster CBC: “The patio door was open. The lights were on. It was clear that she was there.”
The police arrived on the scene within minutes and found the suspect and the unharmed baby.
Quebec police said the suspect, a woman in her 20s, was in police custody in hospital. The baby was returned to her parents within three hours of the alert.
The baby's mother and father, Melissa McMahon and Simon Boisclair, posted a Facebook photo and message on Tuesday thanking police officials, media and anyone who shared the photo for helping find their child.
Ms McMahon praised "four marvellous people, whom we had the chance to meet, [who] identified this woman thanks to Facebook.”