Baby believed dead was kidnapped

[ramanth]

What are the odds....

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...MPLATE=DEFAULT

Mar 2, 8:56 AM EST

Police: Baby Believed Dead Was Kidnapped

By JOANN LOVIGLIO
Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- An infant believed to have died in a 1997 fire actually was kidnapped and raised by a woman who set the blaze to cover her path, authorities said. Now, the child's mother - who recognized the girl at a party - is eagerly awaiting a reunion.

Police issued a warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Correa, 41, of Willingboro, N.J., on charges of arson, kidnapping and conspiracy. She remained at large Tuesday, authorities said.

"This child, now 6 years old, who has been raised by Carolyn Correa as her own, is not her own," police Capt. John Darby said Monday.

The girl's biological mother, Luz Cuevas of Philadelphia, saw the now 6-year-old girl at a birthday party in January and recognized her by a dimple on her face. A subsequent investigation prompted DNA tests that confirmed the mother's suspicion, police said.

The girl, Delimar Vera, was placed in state custody in New Jersey. It was not clear when she would be reunited with her mother, but Cuevas knows how she will greet her daughter.

"I (will) go and give her a kiss and a hug and say, 'I love you, I love you,'" Cuevas said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Delimar was thought to have perished in the Dec. 15, 1997, blaze in her family's home. A body was never found; authorities believed the infant had been consumed by the fast-moving fire.

State Rep. Angel Cruz, who helped the mother contact police after she spotted the little girl, credited "motherly instinct" for connecting mother and child.

Ever since the blaze, Cuevas held on to the belief that her child was somehow alive - partly because it didn't make sense that a window of the infant's second-floor room was found to have been open after the blaze, even though it was the middle of December, Cruz said.

Cuevas told WPHL-TV she recognized the girl at the birthday party from a dimple on her face.

"I said to my sister, `Look, she's my daughter,'" Cuevas said.

It was unclear what brought the child and her mother to the same party, but Correa apparently knew the family through the infant's father, Pedro Vera.

Vera told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Correa stopped in several times after the baby was born, saying she was pregnant. The visits waned after the fire.

Cruz said the girl would be reunited with her mother after authorities in New Jersey break the news to her about what happened.

"I mean, she's 6 years old," he told "Good Morning America." "It will be devastating to this child."

Fire officials at the time blamed the one-alarm blaze on a home-rigged extension cord connected to a space heater.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[pitbullmommy]

i think that story is amazing! i feel for the lettle girl she probably has no idea what is going on. poor thing. I am hapy for the mother that she has her baby back...

[CathyBogart]

Poor kid....I'm happy for the mother, but yeesh...

[luckies4me]

Gee, poor little girl. I cannot believe someone would do such a thing.

It's amazing that the mother knew it was her daughter!

[K9soul]

I feel so so sorry for that little girl. She's most likely going to develop some major insecurity issues. Who wouldn't? I would have been horrified if someone took me from my mom at 6 years old and then told me she wasn't my real mom, but this other lady who was a stranger was..

I just can't imagine. That poor child.

Of course, I'm not blaming her real mother at all for wanting her child back and the other woman deserves to be convicted to the full extent of the law for what she did, but the child is just caught in the middle, and it's so tragic.

[Fox-Gal]

I heard about that today, I couldn't belive it, how amazing to find her after 6 years. WOW.

I heard that the mother was smart enough to not say anything then, but instead told the little girl that she had something in her hair and cut a small piece of her hair to take in to be tested. I don't know how she was that strong or calm, if I belived it was my child, I think I would have broke down right then and there.

Gives some hope to others out there who's children are still missing that anything is possible.

I know it's going to be hard on the child at first, but being only 6 years old should help some. The younger the child the easier is is to adjust to things. Children have that amazing gift to bounce back from things faster then adults do, as long as she feels loved she'll do ok.

It some ways it's going to be harder on her to be taking from the woman she knows as mom to foster care and then on to her real mother. To much change in a short peorid of time for a child to understand.

[popcornbird]

I read this on CNN this morning. Poor child stuck in between. On one side, she had been living with a kidnapper for 6 years, while her mother was left to grieve. On the other side, the kidnapper was who she knew as *mom*, and her real mom is a total stranger. It must be so hard on a child to go through this. Poor thing. Amazing how her mom recognized her after 6 years, when she last saw her as an infant! Its a miracle that God would reunite a child with her mother after all these years, of thinking she was *dead*.

[G.P.girl]

Is it just me or are stories like thid becoming more and more common?

[Nomilynn]

This story is like that book/movie, The Deep End of the Ocean

I mostly feel bad for the little girl I don't know how I would feel being ripped from the only family I'd ever known

[Twisterdog]

I also feel bad for the child, who is going to go through a rough time for a little while. But, being returned to your biological mother, who loves you more than life itself, is SOOOO much better than living with an obviously emotionally damaged and deranged criminal who faked your death just to steal you!

I feel just as bad, if not worse, for the biological mother. As a mother, I can imagine no worse pain in the world than the death of your child. This poor woman has grieved for six years for this child, undoubtadly blaming herself for her daughter's death, and torturing herself with "what if's". That poor mother's nightmare, her hell on earth, has just ended, in nothing short of an absolute miracle.

Yes, the child will have to adjust. She will. She's a six year old child, she will be fine, if the transition is done properly.

The woman who stole this child should serve life in prison, IMO. Evil, evil woman.