CHARLESTON, SC NEWS - LIVE 5 WCSC Breaking News, Weather, SportsCouple's online search, quick thinking lead police to kidnapped baby

Couple's online search, quick thinking lead police to kidnapped baby

By Hatzel Vela  bio | email | Twitter

SUMMERVILLE, SC (WCSC) - A Summerville couple still can't believe a baby kidnapped Monday evening ended up in their living room. On Wednesday night, the couple played the role of detectives and helped police crack the abducted baby case.

Naomi Robinson and Broderick Dowling came home to find Robinson's brother and his girlfriend, Andrea Walker. Walker was arrested accused of kidnapping one-month old Angel Perez from his mother's car at a Rivers Avenue post office in North Charleston.

Robinson said Walker told her family she was pregnant and due in October, but to Robinson's surprise, her newborn nephew seemed like he was two weeks old, not two days old.

"Wow, that's a big baby," Robinson said she told Walker.

Robinson took Dowling aside and said she also questioned the baby's looks. "That baby looks Puerto Rican or Mexican," Dowling told Robinson.

"And that's when it hit me. I was like, 'Oh, my God that might be the baby,'" said Robinson referring the missing Perez baby.

Quietly, the couple went online to see if they were right.

When they search the words "amber alert" on the Live 5 News website, they were shocked to see it was the same baby. "I was trying to get her to calm down because I said, ‘You're going to give it away,'" Dowling said.

[Read the previous report about the kidnapping.]

"I didn't want the FBI to bust through the door and I'm holding the baby cause I'm not the one who took the baby," said Robinson. "I thought I was going to have a heart attack that night."

So, the couple concocted a story that would get them out of the house but not alarm Walker -- Broderick said he wasn't feeling well. The couple went to a nearby Hess gas station with the excuse they were going to get medicine.

Instead, they used the pay phone to call police.

While they waited, Broderick said he held the baby when he started to cry. "I sat over on my wheelchair and I started feeding him and I was whispering in his ear, ‘You're going home to momma,'" Broderick said.

"I just wanted the police to hurry up and come get this baby back home to the mother," Robinson said.

After police planned and coordinated the arrest, they showed up to the couple's home. "I opened it, he winked at me and I winked at him," Broderick said referring to his interaction with investigators.

Walker tried to act like she was feeding the baby and covered his face, Broderick said. He added investigators were not fooled and after identifying the baby, Walker was handcuffed.

"She didn't look like she did a bad thing. She didn't look like she stole somebody's baby," Robinson said.

Robinson said her brother is still distraught because he really believed Walker was having his baby. The two had been in an on-and-off relationship for more than two years, Robinson said.

After Walker was arrested, Robinson said her brother broke down when he walked over to his car, opened his trunk and saw all the things he had bought for the baby he thought was his son.

"I think she was faking her pregnancy the whole time," Robinson added. 

But the couple admits Walker had everyone fooled.

"It's a happy thing that this baby is home with his mother but it's a sad thing because my brother thought that he had a baby," Robinson said.

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