Fact check: Image shows baby kidnapped in Philippines in 2016, not any recent US incident

Bayliss Wagner, USA TODAY
·4 min read
3

The claim: A woman stole a baby from a North Carolina hospital

In just over a week, thousands of members of a Mooresville, North Carolina, Facebook group have shared a July 10 post that implores neighbors to help track down a woman who supposedly kidnapped a newborn baby from a local hospital.

In the photo accompanying the post, a woman in white hospital scrubs holds a small child in her arms. She seems to be glancing nervously to her right.

"This woman impersonated herself as a nurse and stole a 2day old baby boy from a local hospital in Mooresville," reads the post, which more than 3,000 Facebook users shared. "She was caught on camera and is on the loose and if anyone sees her please report this to your nearest police station and share this post so we help the 27year old first-time mother in reuniting with her son (sic)!"

Four days later, similarly concerned Facebook users were sharing the same image in a near-identical post, this time claiming the woman had fled a hospital in Villisca, Iowa, thousands of miles away.

Similar posts have been shared in dozens of community Facebook groups in the U.S. and other countries. All of these posts are identical except for the name of the city where the woman supposedly snatched the child.

They're hoaxes.

The image shows an incident that occurred in the Philippines more than six years ago. Though the woman in the photo did take a child that was not hers, she was arrested the following day, and the baby was reunited with his parents.

USA TODAY reached out to several users who shared the posts for comment.

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Image and claim are from incident that occurred in the Philippines in 2016

The woman in the image isn't "on the loose," and the photo doesn't show her stealing a baby at any U.S. hospital.

Instead, the photo is from security camera footage taken at a hospital in the Philippines, on Jan. 4, 2016, according to the Cebu Daily News.

The image shows Melissa Londres, a woman who disguised herself as a nurse at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, according to news outlets that published photos or clips of the same footage.

Londres told the parents of 2-day-old Prince Niño Celadenia that she was taking their baby to the laboratory to be vaccinated against dengue, and then she left the hospital with the child, the Cebu Daily News reported.

The child was found the following day when police arrested Londres at her home, CNN Philippines and the Cebu Daily News reported. Police said Londres later admitted she kidnapped the child because she hoped it would save her relationship with her boyfriend, CNN Philippines reported.

In 2018, after the parents decided not to pursue their complaint, kidnapping charges were dropped and Londres was ordered to be released from jail, the SunStar, a daily newspaper in Cebu City, reported.

Some police departments have discredited versions of the post that claim the woman stole a newborn from a hospital within their jurisdiction, including police in Laredo, Texas and Dodge City, Kansas.

“We have no reports of any baby being taken from our hospital,” the Dodge City Police Department wrote in a Facebook post on July 14.

There are also no credible news reports of such an incident at a U.S. hospital in the other places identified in iterations of this post.

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Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a woman stole a baby from a North Carolina hospital. The image comes from an incident that occurred in the Philippines in 2016, not in North Carolina or any U.S. cities mentioned in recent Facebook posts, according to several news outlets.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Image reused in false claims about babies kidnapped in US