Ottawa police issued an Amber alert at 3:22 a.m. on June 4, four hours after the Indigenous baby was snatched from her mother’s arms on Carling Avenue.
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In a testament to the human spirit, an 11-month-old girl who requires a feeding tube conquered all odds by living through her worst night, for 10 hours, on the floor of an Ottawa apartment after being kidnapped from her mother’s arms.
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It was Ottawa Police Service Constable Stephane Ethier who found — and helped save — the abducted baby. The cop found the infant alone in the apartment, wrapped in a T-shirt covered in her own feces and vomit. Her kidnapper had cut the baby’s feeding tube and was trying to feed her meat.
The severed part of the feeding tube was lodged in the baby’s stomach. She went without eating for 10 hours.
Ottawa police issued an Amber alert at 3:22 a.m. on June 4, four hours after the Indigenous baby was snatched from her mother’s arms on Carling Avenue.
Around 9 a.m. Constable Ethier, and others, located the kidnapper’s apartment. They could hear the baby crying, and, once inside, found her alone on the floor, starving to death. Ethier carried the baby downstairs from the sixth floor and into the back of a waiting ambulance outside the Pinecrest Road apartment. Ethier stayed in the ambulance by the baby’s side until they got to hospital. Doctors performed life-saving, emergency surgery to extract the cut tube and replace it with a new feeding tube.
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It was nothing short of a miracle on Pinecrest Road, and doctors and police later helped save her life.
Kidnapper Fern Caines-Zwarts, 70, has been found not criminally responsible and will go to a psychiatric hospital instead of jail.
The baby was with her mother and her aunt and friends as they walked down Carling Avenue around 11 p.m., when they were approached by Caines-Zwarts, who presented herself as a doctor. The baby’s mother and her aunt, and friends had all been heavily drinking, according to an agreed statement of facts filed in court this week.
Minutes later, Caines-Zwarts snatched the baby from her mother’s arms.
That night during a search for the abducted infant, Sgt. Andrew Pidcock spoke to the kidnapper, but she gave a fake name, said she was 70 and reported she saw the baby and her mother and gave them help pushing their stroller.
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Then, the 70-year-old kidnapper ran away from the sergeant and somehow eluded police for 10 more hours. It was Pidcock’s description that helped fellow officers find the kidnapper the next morning.
They spotted a woman who matched the description provided by Pidcock and this time she gave her real name, so officers were able to get her address, where they found the abducted baby girl on the floor.
She was transported to CHEO, where doctors saved her life, and Caines-Zwarts was arrested for kidnapping, failing to provide the necessities of life, obstructing police and aggravated assault. She didn’t know the baby or her mother, who was out for a late-night, drunken walk with friends when her baby was snatched from her arms.
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The court heard she was “hysterical” and immediately called for help outside the boarding home for Nunavut residents in Ottawa for medical treatment.
The baby girl who survived the abduction has a neurological disorder and requires a feeding tube.
Caines-Zwarts is now at a psychiatric hospital and under the supervision of the Ontario Review Board.
The board’s panel of psychiatrists, judges, lawyers and public representatives will decide her future and the conditions that come with it.
The police department, at the time, credited its officers for helping the infant, and an officer issued a statement to the media saying they were proud of the solid police work.
