wait, moms have myspace pages now?

Geez -- I hope she doesn't ALWAYS talk like that in front of her child...

She needs to sue them immediately for false imprisonment. That was totally unacceptable and they need to be taught a lesson.

Can't RTFA because I'm at work (myspace blocked), but I'm guessing this woman went a bit overboard. If the security guard actually reached over and snatched her baby, that's one thing. Detaining her because her baby looks like the baby that was missing (and exactly how does a random person tell the baby apart from another one?) isn't cause for alarm.

If HER baby was taken by someone and Wal-Mart didn't stop the kidnapper, we'd see a blog entry about how they're soulless demons who wouldn't help her by stopping that evil woman who stole her child.

And having photos of the kid in your wallet doesn't make the kid 'your' kid, necessarily. You could be a disgruntled nanny, an ex-girlfriend, the kid's estranged aunt or grandmother... I can't count the number of times I've seen stories on America's Most Wanted about children being taken by family members.

@rickspeaks: Dude, I hope she does continue to talk like that in front of her daughter when caught in this kind of situation. Her daughter needs to know that mom will always go ape-sh!t insane to protect her. Definitely a good thing for a child to know as far as I'm concerned.

@rickspeaks:

Oh no, the poor baby she might go directly to HELL if she ever learns that words like FUCK exist.

I think that is a perfectly appropriate thing to say. If ever there was a situation which called for a "fuck you," that is it.

I don't know what the big deal is, all she had to do was show her receipt....It's store policy!

Wow... I don't know what to say. And to think people laughed at those who refuse to show their receipt.

@RvLeshrac: Anyone, and I mean anyone, ever reaches for one of my children in an attempt to take them from me will lose their arm to the elbow leaving nothing but a sinewy, bluddy stump.

I applaud this woman.

Of course, the rent-a-cop had a thought of being a hero, by demanding that the woman hand over her baby.
After that incident, they both appeared to be crazy.

I try to avoid situations like this by avoiding walmart.

The security guard was a bit of an idiot to ask for the baby. He should have asked the lady to come with him to confirm if the baby was the one missing or something.

Hell hath no fury than a woman who's baby your trying to take away.

@rickspeaks:

Seriously? Do you have children? Because Hell to the mother fucking no is anyone coming near my girlfriend's son or our new baby trying to take either away without the mouth of a sailor and the fists of god raining down upon them.

If it's on MySpace it's real right?

Not to defend Walmart here, but if there's a missing baby alert store-wide and a woman comes up to the register holding a baby matching the description (hello, all babies look alike), then Security's going to step in and prevent her from leaving. If they reached over and tried to TAKE the baby from her, then that's deplorable. But for them to block her from leaving the store, that's acceptable, IMHO.

Wasn't it just a few months ago that some story popped up from a mother who locked her kid in a hot car and was mad that nobody was acting fast enough? Now here's a story where Walmart reacts TOO much?

Did they ever find the original baby that was missing? I sure hope so...

I also don't tend to take a woman's myspace blog entry as gospel for anything....

The guard demanded she hand him her baby. Then he reached for the baby. I think the mother did a very proper amount of freaking out. Maybe even not enough freaking out.

That is insane. I would have done the exact same thing. My kids look nothing like me. I have dark curly hair & green eyes, pink skin, my kids both have blond hair, blue eyes, and olive skin. They don't look like my kids but they are mine. I can easily see where a security guard would think I was full of shit if I said they were my kids. I would have kicked and screamed and freaked out as much as was possible. No one would be able to take my baby from me unless I was dead. I promise you that.

If the baby isn't on the receipt, there's not much you can do at Walmart...

@hc5duke:

Have to have something do when sitting home all day on welfare.

The needless/baseless indignation of the average Consumerist commenter continues to amaze me. Sadly thus far only Rvleshrac is making any sense. This is called a Code Adam - federally mandated lockdown in gov't facilities and strongly encouraged in private ones.

Now, the guard had no right to try to take the baby away from its mother. But she should not expect to be able to just walk out of the store if someone's baby is missing. As Rv. said - pretty difficult to identify immediately if that baby is the missing one or not, especially in a store filled with clothes that could alter the appearance of said child.

If you are so important that you can't be stopped in a public store for 5 minutes while they find a missing child, please do humanity a favor and DIAF. When did you become so important that you can't be bothered in the least during someone else's crisis?

Cute baby! Don't give her to Walmart!

Run don't walk to the nearest attorney. You need to get any video of the incident before they trash it. Also that security guard isn't going to be a Wally World employee much longer so you need to get him subpeonaed also.

===========================

For the Wally World Crime Report go to:
[www.walmartcrimereport.com]

For the Target AP Directives go to:
www.targetfiling.blogspot.com

Do you have a receipt for that baby, ma'am?

In all seriousness now, she has to be applauded and the way Walmart was acting was ridiculous. Don't try and take a child from a mother, besides alot of babies look the same if not very similar, how can you make those kind of judgments?

Her reaction was perfectly on course, I bet at home she had to hold back her husband from going there and kicking some ass.

She needs to get a life. They were only stopping her for the sake of the child. We must all forgo our problems and thoughts for the sake of the kidren.

Ahh... walmart... the fault is with the security guard here. It was definitely wrong to ask the woman to "hand over" the child. The right thing to do would have been to explain the situation and ask the woman to wait. I'm sure any mother would understand the situation and wait with her child until it could be confirmed.

Any chance of the consumerist getting an objective source for this incident besides a myspace rant?

Did anyone try to contact Walmart for their side of the incident or would that have gotten in the way of the story...

This is why its bad to shop at Wal*Mart. I've been saying it for years, they'll steal your babies!!!

Um, If you think the baby is the abducted baby then you call police ASAP. You could detain her by telling her what they thought or follow the woman out and see where she goes. Chances are she went into a car, so you see the car and get the license plate and give it to the cops.

Lawsuit. Now.

im i the only one that wished, for her sake, she was buying a tv that day? "take it all for free"

lol. got a 1080p 42" lcd and all i had to do was almost get my kid taken...

i keed i keed :)

@MBPharmD: I agree with your 100%. The store also handled the situation totally wrong. They should have explained to the woman that there was a baby missing, they were checking all people with children, and they needed to verify that Ava was her child. The guard should have NEVER reached for the baby or demanded she hand the baby over to her. The store was within it's rights, as was the mother to refuse.

It's just another example of people's hearts being in the right places but their heads being up their asses.

So here is the story:

Security guard is trying to verify it is her baby. She is screaming obscenities at him, making no sense whatsoever. She attempts to dash out of the store, leaving everything behind (not suspicious at all). She is apparently screaming obscenities left and right at the top of her lungs, making a confusing situation much worse. Somehow, I don't think things happened the way she described.

Also, you aren't very patriotic. If you were, you would have handed over your baby so they could use it for child labor instead of being forced to use inferior Chinese child labor.

They were really trying to take the baby b/c Walmart, does in fact, eat babies. A wonderful ending to a possible tragic and quite disgusting story :)

I think this has been said many times before, but we have an obligation to not act like screaming lunatics when confronted in such situations.

I really enjoy the postings here, but more recently this has become "The Sensationalist" more than a consumer advocacy site.

I think this is why Home Depot fires employees for going after thieves. As much as we'd like to think the employee is noble for going after some scumbag, what if they have the wrong person? Then you've got a case of unlawful detention Better to call the cops and let them deal with it, imo.

If I was the mother, I would have the baby in one hand and my 1911 in the other. Take my kid from me? Over my rotting corpse.

The guard fucked up. He has no business getting involved. Security guards job is to OBSERVE and REPORT. Nothing more. He should have let her leave, and recorded the make model and lic plate of the car and pass it along to the police. The only exception to that is if the missing kids mother was with the guard and told him that was her baby. Then he could take more action. Till then, he does not have the facts and is taking the law into his own hands.

Trying to forcibly remove a child from her mothers arms is a violent threatening act.

@bluegus32: And if someone did take your baby, you'd want the security guard at the door to stop the kidnapper, right?

"Why did you let that woman leave with my baby?"

"She said it was hers, then she yelled a lot."

"Oh, well OK then. Thanks for your diligence."

Two questions:

1. Was the missing child ever found?

2. Does Wal-Mart have DNA tests in their security office, because how else would they verify that a child is yours?

@krztov: I was hoping someone hadn't beaten me to that comment.

@homerjay: HAH :)

@jwissick: I don't know... I'd be pretty pissed if someone took my kids from the store and the security told me, "yeah, I saw them leave. I took down the plate and car make and model for ya!" The kidnappers could have done any number of horrible things by the time LAPD bothered to show up.

The guard screwed up BIG time. When a 'Code Adam' is called NOBODY enters or leaves the store until it is cleared (the missing child is found) so that everyone can e questioned if there was a real incident.

You do NOT take the child - you keep them there. It is NOT unlawful imprisonment - it's protecting the kids.

I was in a store once when I heard a code adam called. No employees were near the door so I stopped people from leaving myself for a couple minutes.

Walmart needs to start apologizing and doing whatever it takes to make her happy (assuming the story is real) and the guard needs to get a lot of Special High Intensity Training (S.H.I.T) - all that he can take ad more.

If a store is under a Code Adam (lost child) then what's supposed to happen is this:

Entrances/Exits/bathrooms get locked down, guards posted at as many as can be covered. People are allowed out one at a time as they finish shopping, but if any are with children that match the description (or anything even close, snatchers can shave a head or change an outfit in seconds flat) they are asked to come over to where the person who lost the child is. If they recognize the child, police are called. Otherwise they're free to go.

Without context or more backstory it just looks like the employees had little/no training on how to handle a Code Adam and totally borked it up.

The mother was completely within her rights as a human and a mother to go apeshit on anyone threatening her child. I don't even have kids but I would do the same.

@MBPharmD:

If you are so important that you can't be stopped in a public store for 5 minutes while they find a missing child, please do humanity a favor and DIAF. When did you become so important that you can't be bothered in the least during someone else's crisis?

--

Stopping someone is one thing. Trying to steal your child from you with no proof is another. It is apologist like you that give the rent-a-cops a delusional thought that they can do what they damn well please because you are in a store they work at.

Feel free to be a coward all you want and blaim the poor lady who had to defend herself and baby. There are people out there who are not like you thankfully and will defend and protect them, if they can.

Yes, reaching for/trying to take a baby is totally unreasonable, but what nobody had addressed yet is how, if handled correctly, should the mother identified the kid as her own? Are all moms required to carry around a birth certificate now? Is that even proof enough???

@Steel_Pelican: Stop the kidnapper, not some random woman who just happened to have her baby with her.

It was not necessary for the guard to try to take the child from her. If that is what happened then he was wrong. Like micahd said, explaining the situation should have been sufficient. They could have had the other mother come over and confirm that it wasn't her child instead of the guard trying to take the kid away.

I don't think it was wrong that Wal-Mart reacted - but rather their reaction was poor.

"Hand over the baby, ma'am. Just hand over the baby." Like it was a grenade or something.

Come on! No parent should ever stand for something like that! You don't just let strangers take your baby away from you, even if they have a shiny rent-a-cop badge, and especially if it's in a Wal-Mart!

I'm sure that if the Wal-Mart security guy took her aside, and explained the situation to her, and politely requested that she provide some proof that the child was hers, then it would have been much less painful. I would think that any mother would sympathize with the cause and want to help out - because if her baby had been taken, she'd want the same thing.

There are probably about 800 alternate methods Wal-Mart could have used to properly handle the situation. Instead they relied on poor judgment, and their patent customer-comes-last(tm) philosophy.

@Steel_Pelican: But as other people have stated here -- there is a huge difference between stopping someone at the door to verify their identity and the identity of their children vs reaching for someone's baby and saying "give me your baby".

Stopping someone for a few minutes under these circumstances is perfectly appropriate. Trying to take their baby is illegal, unconscionable and so completely beyond the acceptable standards of decency in our society.

Sure the store might be looking for a missing baby and maybe they should stop all with babies until they find them, but once the security guard asked the woman to hand over her baby, she was absolutely right to scream her lungs out. That changed the situation. That is a fight or flight response. She tried the fight response with her screaming, when that didn't work she tried the flight response. In her thinking, who cares about her stuff when someone threatens her daughter. You don't think, hmmm, maybe I shouldn't leave my stuff because that might look suspicious. You react.

If is was me, I would done similar to this woman and told him to fuck off, but instead of running after that didn't work, he would have felt the raining down of fists on his head (well one fist as I held the baby).