Arizona Police News: Gas Station Worker Bags Kidnapping Grandma
A gas station employee in Arizona earlier this week helped police catch a woman who allegedly kidnapped her granddaughter, according to a report from ABC news.
The woman accused of the kidnapping, 57-year-old Carolyn Ferguson, walked into a Tonopah, Arizona, convenience store with the 6-month-old child after her car broke down. Karin Atkins, the employee, said she became wary of Ferguson when she tried to give the infant cappuccino milk.
When Ferguson couldn't answer simple questions about the child's name, Atkins called her supervisor and 911. The two gas station employees later determined that an Amber alert had been issued for Laylani Mosley, and the alert said the child had been seen last with her grandmother, Carolyn Ferguson.
Court documents said that Ferguson is bipolar and had been off her medication, the ABC News report said.
"It's a mom thing," Atkins told ABC. "If it wasn't her baby ... it would kill me if I let her walk out that door and know later on that it wasn't hers, and (I) could have done something at that moment."
Atkins said she had to think quickly to keep Ferguson in the store and that she distracted the woman by taking pictures with the baby and changing her diaper. When police arrived on the scene, they took Ferguson into custody.
Police said that without Atkins, this story may have had an unpleasant ending.
"Had it not been for her and how observant she was, and attention to detail, we probably wouldn't be standing here with a successful story right now," Deputy Joaquin Enriquez of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told ABC News.
Ferguson and Laylani had been at the child's home in Huntington Beach, California, when the grandmother drove off with the child because of a disagreement the night before, Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy told KTLA.
The two were taken to the truck stop by a Good Samaritan after Ferguson's car broke down on Interstate 10, Handy said.
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