Abducted Newborn Returned Infant Found Unharmed In Box After He Was Taken From Hospital

A newborn abducted from a hospital was found alive Saturday 19 hours after his disappearance, and a 30-year-old woman was taken into custody, the Pierce County sheriff’s office said.

Two-day-old Stuart William Coen was found in a cardboard box behind a convenience store after the woman told detectives where to look, sheriff’s spokesman Curt Benson said.

Benson said the child was unharmed and was taken to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in nearby Tacoma for a checkup before being reunited with his parents.

The woman told detectives that she was unnerved by all the media attention surrounding the disappearance of the infant, so she left the child near the store about 6 p.m., Benson said. Baby Stuart was rescued 2-1/2 hours later.

The abduction occurred about 1:30 a.m. when a woman dressed in a white lab coat, posing as a doctor, walked into St. Clare Hospital in this Tacoma suburb.

Investigators said the woman was familiar with hospital procedures.

“She walked the walk, talked the talk, had the look. She knew the hospital layout. She looked like she belonged there,” Benson said.

As police searched for the woman and the infant, the father of the boy issued a tearful plea for the baby’s safe return.

The woman, whose husband is in the Army at nearby Fort Lewis, was in a Fred Meyer store with her two daughters, 9 and 13, and a baby in a carrier.

A store employee suspected they might have been shoplifting so he kept an eye on them, Benson said. When they left the store, the alarm went off and a produce manager chased them into the parking lot. He got a partial Tennessee license plate and a description of the car, Benson said.

Lakewood police distributed the information, and the military police at Fort Lewis stopped the car Saturday evening.

The woman eventually admitted to taking the baby, Benson said.