Snatched baby reunited with parents
An ambulance crew responding to an anonymous call today found a three-week-old baby girl who was snatched from her Australian mother in a weekend attack at a Melbourne shopping mall.
Two suspects in the kidnapping later turned themselves in.
Paramedics found Montana Barbaro abandoned at a rundown house. She was reunited with her parents at a hospital a day after her mother, Anita Ciancio, 27, made a tearful public plea for the baby’s return.
Police said they detained a couple who turned themselves into a police station in Ballarat, a town outside Melbourne where the baby was kidnapped.
Speaking outside Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital moments after being given back Montana, Ciancio said she was confident all along that her daughter would be found.
“My heart was telling me she was OK. My heart told me all along that she was going to be fine,” she said. “I think a mum knows these things.”
The baby was kidnapped on Saturday, when a man and a woman in their mid-30s attacked Ciancio with pepper spray before snatching her child in a car park at the Brimbank Central Shopping Centre.
Police released footage from a security camera of a couple entering the car park.
The two suspects in Ballarat were taken to Melbourne for questioning in relation to the kidnapping, Inspector Tony Cecchin of Victoria Police said.
