FBI: Woman who raised stolen baby is held in Conn.

Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn.

A North Carolina woman who raised a child stolen 23 years ago from a New York hospital surrendered to authorities on a probation violation charge Sunday, and she was to appear in federal court today to face kidnapping charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Ann Pettway surrendered Sunday morning to the FBI and Bridgeport police on a warrant from North Carolina, where she’s on probation because of a conviction for attempted embezzlement, FBI supervisory special agent William Reiner said. She turned herself in days after a widely publicized reunion between the child she raised, now an adult, and her biological mother.

Pettway received two years of probation last June after she took items from a store where she worked, which is considered embezzlement under North Carolina law, state correction spokeswoman Pamela Walker said.

Department of Correction officials there tried repeatedly to contact her after finding out investigators wanted to question her in the 1987 abduction of Carlina White.

North Carolina officials said Friday they believed Pettway was on the run from authorities. They said Sunday they would seek her extradition.

Carlina was just 19 days old when her parents took her to Harlem Hospital in the middle of the night with a high fever. Joy White and Carl Tyson said a woman who looked like a nurse had comforted them. The couple left the hospital to rest, but their baby was missing when they went back. No suspects were identified.

Carlina is now 23 and has been living under the name Nejdra Nance in Connecticut and in the Atlanta area. She said she had long suspected Pettway wasn’t her biological mother.

She checked the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led her to recently finding her biological mother.