Abduction Alert...texas....

[SEATJERKER]

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...COMON' BOYS, LET'S FIND THIS ONE IF WE CAN HELP.....

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One-Month-Old Girl Snatched in Abilene, Texas
Updated 10:34 AM ET August 14, 2002


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A one-month-old girl was brazenly snatched from a parked van after her mother stepped a mere 10 feet away on Tuesday in Abilene, Texas, police said early on Wednesday, in another in a string of U.S. child abductions.

Abilene police and the FBI were hunting for a woman who sped away in a car after grabbing the infant, Nancy Crystal Chavez, just as her mother turned to walk a shopping cart to a storage area, police said.

"The baby's mother had swung the sliding door of her van open so her two other children could get in, and she laid the child seat down on the seat," Abilene Sgt. Kim Vickers said.

"She then walked the shopping buggy 10 to 12 feet to a storage area, turned around and this lady was taking the car seat" from the van.

The mother, Margarita Chavez, screamed as the suspect jumped into her car. Lunging, Chavez desperately grabbed the getaway car and was dragged about 30 to 40 feet before letting go, Vickers said.

Other shoppers tried to stop the vehicle, with one teen-age boy pounding on its window.

Vickers said the kidnapper was seen on surveillance cameras before the abduction circling a Wal-Mart parking lot in a car, idling to the side, and then rapidly pulling up to the parked van when the incident took place at about 4:30 p.m. CDT.

"We're very confident this was a premeditated crime in which someone was waiting for an opportunity," he said.

Authorities, including the FBI, are pursing several leads in the case, he said.

The incident was one of at least a half dozen kidnappings of girls across the U.S. West since the beginning of the year, setting parents on edge even as experts insist that statistics do not show such crimes on the rise.

In the most recent case, police said Tuesday that 4-year-old Jessica Cortez, who has been missing from a popular Los Angeles park since Sunday, may have been found at a free clinic near her home, taken there by a woman who was not a relative.

Sgt. Vickers said he did not think the Abilene incident was a "copy cat" crime, but instead followed the pattern of infant abductions by a desperate woman who wants to have children or may have tragically lost one.

Margarita Chavez was being treated for scratches at a local hospital, he said.

[Keith_Hixson]

Parking Lot security camera caught the abduction on film. It is my guess that it is some sick lady wanting a baby of her own. Usually they capture these people very quickly. Someone turns them in. Fortunately the child usually suffers no harm but the mother and older children will have some issues that will need some counseling.

Keith

[Drywall]

Just heard on the radio that the baby has been found safe and sound and is on her way back to her parents.