How social media helped recover a stolen baby in a hospital

The event took place a few days ago in Canada. The nightmare of every newly born mother, of every father, that someone takes your child from the hospital.

This is the story of parents, a newborn, a mentally disturbed and three young people and of how social networks helped recover a stolen baby in a hospital.

We are many who have complained more than once and twice about the intrusion of social networks in our lives, the lack of privacy we suffer if we are not careful and the dangers that this can bring to us or our children.

But this time it has been thanks to that lack of privacy that has helped some parents recover their newly released offspring since most of their nightmares will end with a happy ending, although yes, the scare I imagine they are not going To happen in a long time.

The facts

Mélissa McMahon, and her newborn baby are in the hospital room, a nurse comes in and tells him that he needs to take the baby to weigh him. In principle, there is no reason to distrust, it is a woman dressed like the rest of the hospital nurses who is only going to take the baby a moment for something routine, isn't it?

Unfortunately for Mélissa, neither the woman was a nurse, nor did she pretend to weigh the baby, and just as the fake nurse entered the hospital, she left, calmly and without raising suspicion, with a baby in her lap. Minutes later that the nurse took her baby Mélissa realized what was happening and gave notice to the nurses, this time, the real ones.

In seconds the hospital had activated its alarm protocols and each and every one of its workers had started looking for the child. Witnesses saw a red car and a "baby on board" sticker and thanks to the internal circuit of cameras they could see who was the fake nurse who had stolen the baby.

Quebec police activated a yellow alert for kidnapping and in a matter of minutes the story went viral on social networks and the face of the alleged kidnapper was already on all screens.

The interesting thing about this story is that four girls were that night browsing Facebook and saw the news, they quickly decided that they would go out to look for that red car that everyone was looking for. It was something they had already done other times (I miss the one of the young Canadians the same as civic), although this time they didn't need it. One of the friends recognized the woman in the photo, it was her neighbor!

Without losing a minute, they went out to where the woman was supposed to reside and discovered, parked nearby, a red toyota with the baby sticker on board. As good amateur detectives or rather, as good followers of police series, they used an old key to enter the apartment block, yes, before they alerted the police of what was happening.

Minutes later the police assaulted the woman's apartment and recovered the small, healthy and safe Victoria, immediately after checking that she had not suffered any damage, they returned her to her legitimate and very worried parents.

This time, we can say that, sometimes vilified, social networks have served as a vehicle to make this story have a happy ending for the little one. Your kidnapper is waiting for the tests that certify your mental state before facing a long sentence.

"Four wonderful people we have had the opportunity to meet by identifying this woman thanks to Facebook. It is the only reason why Victoria is in my arms right now," was what the mother posted on Facebook to thank them.

The question is required, Is it really that easy to steal a newborn from a hospital or was it a whole set of human errors? I have always seen a lot of security in the maternity hospitals and of course, I think it would be a lot to see a nurse go out with a baby as well as a hospital. Perhaps it would be good to know what tests are planned for our children and to be included in the birth plan.

Can social networks help in cases like this? I am sure it is. In a few minutes an image will be on thousands of computers and will have gone around the world. Now we just need to look at what we have around.