According to Vanguard, A baby stolen from her sleeping
mother’s arms shortly after birth has been found by the family through an
astonishing coincidence 17 years later, South African police said Friday.
A 50-year-old woman has been
arrested and charged with kidnapping after pupils noticed a remarkable likeness
between the 17-year-old and her younger biological sister who started attending
the same school this year.
DNA tests have confirmed that the
older girl is the daughter of Celeste and Morne Nurse, who was snatched from
Groote Schuur hospital as a three-day-old baby named Zephany in April 1997,
local media reported.
The parents, who later had three
more children, have celebrated Zephany’s birthday every year since she was
kidnapped, never giving up hope that their first-born child would come back to
them someday, the Cape Argus said.
Zephany grew up with a different
name, and a different family, never knowing she was not their real daughter.
But last month her biological
sister, Cassidy Nurse, started high school at the same school as Zephany, and
fellow pupils noticed a startling resemblance she bore to a final-year student.
When Cassidy told her parents about
the girl, they invited her home for a cup of coffee. When they saw the striking
resemblance between the girls, they contacted the police.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel
André Traut confirmed that a woman had been arrested. She and her husband, who
is also in his fifties, have no other children.
“The suspect is being charged with
kidnapping, fraud and contravening sections… of the Children’s Act, in that she
fraudulently pretended that she was the biological mother of a child,” Traut
said.
“The kidnapped girl has since been
placed in the care of the Department of Social Services of the Western Cape
Government.”
Without knowing it, the Nurse family
had been living within a couple of kilometres of their kidnapped daughter.
