Relatives of Kamiyah Mobley, who was snatched from a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital room just hours after she was born 18 years ago, are still celebrating the news that she was found alive a few hours away, living with a woman she thought was her real mother.
In an interview with HLN, Mobley’s paternal grandmother, Velma Aiken, and aunt, Yvette Williams, said they remember when the newborn disappeared on July 10, 1998. A woman who appeared to be a nurse entered the hospital room and took the infant away, saying the baby girl needed some medical tests.
“She had on a nurse’s uniform,” Aiken recalled. “I thought it was weird she had her pocketbook on her shoulder with the baby in her arms, and she had on gloves.”
Aiken told HLN she asked the woman, “Where are you going with grandmama’s baby? I just got here.”
She said the woman replied that the baby would be back “in 15 minutes.”
But 15 minutes turned into 18 years.
“I just kept thinking, Lord, if I had known that my intuition was right, I could’ve stopped her,” Aiken told HLN. “I told the detective that I could’ve beat her with my bag, or something,”
Gloria Williams, 51, who allegedly posed as a nurse and took the infant, was extradited to Jacksonville from South Carolina on Tuesday and charged with kidnapping and interfering with custody. She had spent the past 18 years raising Mobley as her own daughter, authorities said.
Mobley was located after a series of tips late last year to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, according to the sheriff. The FBI assisted in the investigation. Last Friday, Aiken got the news she’d been waiting almost two decades for.
Authorities “came out to my house and told me that I needed to come downtown. They said they had a new lead about Kamiyah Mobley.”
“I didn’t know what to think, I hoped they were going to tell me that they had found her, but we didn’t know,” said Aiken.
The relatives learned that Mobley had grown up less than 200 miles away under a different name. She was raised in Walterboro, South Carolina.
Mobley met her biological family for the first time Saturday, CNN affiliate WJXT reported.
Some have offered Gloria Williams forgiveness for her alleged crimes.
“People do a lot of things for a lot of different reasons. Whether it’s right or wrong, they still do it,” said Yvette Williams.
“When they told me my grandbaby was alive, and well, and cared for, that’s all that matters to me,” Aiken said.