Police Release Sketches of Couple Who Tried to Snatch Infant

Police on Monday released composite sketches of a woman and a man who allegedly tried to snatch a 6-month-old girl from a grocery store parking lot until her mother wrestled the infant away from the would-be kidnappers.

As investigators continued searching for the suspects, the 26-year-old mother was trying to recover from what she described Monday as one of the most harrowing experiences of her life.

“At first, right after it happened, I was scared to take her anywhere,” said the 26-year-old Huntington Beach resident, who requested that her name not be used. “It’s a little better now. I try to leave her at home if I can find a sitter. Otherwise, I take her with me, but I keep one hand on her all the time.”

The attempted kidnapping occurred about 6 p.m. May 5 in a Lucky supermarket parking lot at Yorktown Avenue and Goldenwest Street, police said. The mother had her baby in a removable car seat in a shopping cart and was loading her groceries when a man and a woman tried to take the child, police said.

The mother said the female suspect “kept asking strange questions and I told her to go away. Just then a guy came walking around from behind a van and asked me, ‘Do I know you?’ ” The woman then grabbed the car seat, but before she could run off with the baby, the infant’s mother said she grabbed her child, put her in the car and took off.

Earlier, the female suspect had been following the mother-and-daughter pair throughout the store, and stood behind them in the register line, police said. The woman was holding three items inside a grocery basket while the mother was pushing a cart full of groceries and her baby.

“I said for her to go ahead but she insisted that I go ahead,” the mother said. “At that point, she kept talking to the baby. She kept saying she hasn’t had a baby this young in a long time. I thought that was strange.”

The mother advised others to put their child in the car before unloading groceries, which she said she should have done.

“You just have to be much more cautious nowadays,” she said.