A 19-year-old Morrow woman was sentenced to 20 years — 10 to be served in prison — Monday after pleading guilty to snatching a newborn from a Clayton County hospital room in January.
Naquelle Sontieq Ballard pleaded guilty to kidnapping and false imprisonment charges for posing as a hospital worker, walking into a room at Southern Regional Medical Center Women’s Life Center around 9 a.m. on Jan. 4 and taking a 2-day-old girl.
An alarm system and two hospital employees thwarted Ballard’s attempt to leave the hospital with the infant, whom she had placed in her pocketbook. The baby was not injured.
Channel 2 Action News obtained surveillance video that shows Ballard leaving Jasmere Brown’s room with Brown’s 2-day-old daughter, Chloe. Ballard then places the newborn in a purse and tries to get away, but two hospital employees fight with herand snatch the baby from her. Ballard runs off, but returns when she realizes her car keys were in her purse. Ballard gets the keys and again leaves. Workers jot down her car tag number. She was arrested about five miles away in Lake City, according to authorities.
Ballard had told her boyfriend she was pregnant and tried to kidnap the infant after she suffered a miscarriage, according to Channel 2.
Chloe is 10 months old now. Her mother was so traumatized that she moved out of state. “Especially when the alarms went off, I knew she was gone and I would never see her again,” Brown said she was thinking.
Brown told Channel 2 she felt justice had been served. She did not attend the sentencing, but said had she attended, she would have told Ballard: “Sorry about her loss, but she just can’t go around and make someone else have a loss and miss their child.”
The judge also ordered Ballard to meet with Brown if the mother ever wants a face-to-face as part of Brown’s healing.
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Credit: AP
