Woman, 18, arrested after ‘snatching week-old baby boy while posing as hospital staff’

The 18-year-old is said to have posed as a hospital worker to kidnap the seven day old baby boy named Noel from a maternity ward.

A woman has been arrested for allegedly posing as hospital staff and stealing a one-week-old baby boy from a maternity ward. The boy named Noel was swiped from a hospital in Lüdenscheid, Germany.

She is alleged to have pretended the infant needed to be taken for a routine examination, before trying to escape the hospital. Officers said the suspect entered the parents’ room and told the mum she was taking the baby for a check-up, before vanishing, leaving the heartbroken parents terrified when they went looking for their newborn a short time later.

The devastated disappearance sparked a major police search as officers raced to find the missing newborn and it took a painstaking hour before cops found baby Noel unharmed in the stairwell of a nearby parking garage.

The baby had been left lying naked next to a payment machine around an eight-minute drive from the hospital and was rushed back to hospital where he was given a check by doctors who confirmed he was unharmed.

The suspected kidnapper was arrested on Sunday after detectives identified her using CCTV footage. It is reported she is already known to police for “various offences”.

Officers trailed surveillance footage from the hospital and surrounding areas to find the tot, even deploying a sniffer dog during the hunt for the missing infant.

The news in Germany comes just days after another horror story featuring a newbown hit the headlines.

Reports in local papers state that the mother allegedly faked the kidnapping of her own three-month-old baby before he was ultimately found dead in a river.

The mother – named only as Dijana L – is accused of killing her infant son and leaving his body on the outskirts of Rankbach in Baden-Württemberg.

The 32-year-old allegedly told police last Thursday that a stranger had snatched the baby from his pushchair. The baby boy’s grandmother told Bild: “My daughter came home from shopping, she had bags with her and wanted to carry them up to the second floor.”

She left the boy in his stroller on the pavement in front of the house, but claimed he was gone when she returned.

A huge manhunt was launched after the report, with drones, helicopters, firefighters and 40 rescue dogs searching for the missing child but the infant was later found around a third of a mile from the family’s home.

The mum was later arrested accused of fabricating the kidnapping to cover up the death.