Back to uniforms after baby abduction

Press, 9 December 1989, Page 1

Back to uniforms after baby abduction

PA Auckland Casually dressed Middlemore Hospital nurses have been ordered back into uniform to guard against a repetition of this week’s baby abduction from the maternity ward. The medical superintendent, Dr Anne Simpson, said the baby-snatcher would have been more obvious if nurses had been in uniform. Maternity ward nurses stopped wearing uniforms a year ago to create a more relaxed atmosphere.

Dr Simpson said nurses would resume wearing uniforms while the hospital held an inquiry into the abduction of baby Ho from her mother’s bedside on Wednesday night. The South Auckland police are still looking for the 15-year-old suspected of taking the day-old baby. Detective Inspector Tony Shalfoon said the female “street kid” gave the baby to a 13-year-old girlfriend. He said the 13-year-old apparently panicked and placed the

baby in a cardboard box at the front door of an Otara house. Six hours after baby Ho was snatched, she was returned to her parents, Mrs Thi Lac Ho and Mr Van Ciiu Ho, Vietnamese refugees. The 13-year-old girl lives near the Flat Bush Road house where she left the baby. She told the police both she and her friend wanted a child, so they stole the baby. Mr Shalfoon said the 13-year-old, a school pupil, was soon found by the police. The itinerant

street kid, although well known to police, had not been apprehended late last evening.

The hospital inquiry group studying the abduction will make security recommendations to the. hospital. •

Dr Simpson said the abduction was the first of its kind in New Zealand, and the hospital did not want to overreact.

“We have to be careful we don’t go overboard and make life uncomfortable for women in the ward.”