AAP General News (Australia)
02-14-1999
VIC: Missing baby found safe, woman arrested in Werribee
MELBOURNE, Feb 13 AAP - An eight-month-old baby girl police feared may have burned to death
in a house fire has been found safe and well after apparently being abducted.
A police spokesman told AAP a 35-year-old woman had been arrested by the special response
squad in Werribee, west of Melbourne, and was being taken to the squad's St Kilda Road,
Melbourne, headquarters.
"The child is undergoing a medical examination, but appears to be safe and well," he said.
No further details as to where the woman and child were found, or whether they were found
together, were yet available, he said.
Earlier today the girl's mother told police she awoke in her home in Bellara Street,
Doncaster, in Melbourne's east, to find the house on fire and her baby gone.
Police were unsure whether the child had died in the fire, which broke out at about
10.20am, and sifted the ruins for a body. But they did not rule out the prospect of abduction.
They also began looking for an unidentified woman, who had called at the house about four
hours before the fire broke out and was believed to have still been there when the mother went
to sleep on a sofa.
ABC TV reported the mother, who was treated for smoke inhalation at Box Hill Hospital, told
a neighbour the woman had given her pills to take.
"She (the mother) said the woman had given her a couple of little white tablets to take ...
she didn't know what they were," neighbour Beres Campbell said.
"She was banging on the front door and when I got there she said the house was on fire and
she could not find the baby."
"The mother was asleep at the time the fire started and when she woke, it appears she
couldn't find the baby and was disorientated," Detective Inspector Ray McLeod-Dryden said.
ABC Radio said the woman had claimed to be a health worker.
AAP sjg/cdh
KEYWORD: BABY 2ND NIGHTLEAD
1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.
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