Mother's plea after couple snatch baby
A mother today made a tearful plea to a couple who snatched three-week-old baby in an underground car park at a shopping mall.
Police are searching for a man and a woman in their mid-30s who sprayed 27-year-old Anita Ciancio with pepper spray before snatching the baby in the southern city of Melbourne last night.
Police released footage from a closed circuit security camera of a couple pictured entering the car park and were seeking them for questioning.
Ciancio had strapped her baby, Montana Barbaro, into her car and was loading groceries into the boot at the Brimbank Central Shopping Centre when the pair pounced, took the baby and drove off in another car.
“Please look after her – she’s only three-weeks-old and she’s just a precious baby,” a sobbing Ciancio told reporters outside a police station.
“She just needs to be looked after and kept warm and safe, and please, please just take her somewhere safe and call the police.”
Ciancio had been breast-feeding Montana and was concerned that her baby had not been fed since her abduction.
Ciancio said she had noticed the couple following her in a supermarket.
Police said the kidnappers have made no contact with them or with Montana’s family.
Her father, Joe Barbaro, is related to Melbourne gangland figure Pasquale Barbaro, who was gunned down last year. But police ruled out any link between the kidnapping and Melbourne’s gangland war which has left 23 underworld figures dead in the last six years.
“There’s absolutely no link or relevance to the recent spate of underworld murders,” said Police Inspector Tony Cecchin.
Cecchin said police had yet to establish a motive.
“We haven’t determined whether it’s premeditated, or in fact a random act of kidnapping,” he said. “This is extremely unusual.”
A distraught Mr Barbaro said he had no idea why his child had been kidnapped.
“The baby was already in the car and the scumbag just sprayed her (Ciancio) with capsicum spray, belted her in the face and held her down on the ground while the woman took the baby out of the car,” Barbaro said.
