Hours-old baby snatched from Brazil hospital is reunited with parents

Newborn snatched from Brazil hospital is reunited with his parents after 19-year-old girl stuffed him in a bag and took him home

  • Ravi Cunha was reunited with his parents Wednesday morning, about six hours after he was taken from a hospital in Rio de Janeiro
  • Cunha, who was born Tuesday, had been breastfed and had a diaper change moments before his mother and maternal grandmother had fallen asleep
  • Cuane Malaquias, 19, is said to have entered the hospital through a balcony and taken the baby to her home, where she was arrested

A one-day-old baby boy has been reunited with his parents after a teenage girl snatched him from a Rio de Janeiro hospital early Wednesday morning.

Ravi Cunha was taken from Amelia Buarque de Hollanda Municipal Maternity Hospital about 2 am while his mother Nívea Rabelo, 27, was sleeping after she had gone into labor Tuesday.

Cuane Malaquias, 19, allegedly placed Cunha inside an oversized bag and took him to her home five miles away in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Morro do Borel.

Police received an anonymous tip from a neighbor and arrested Malaquias at her home Wednesday at 8:15am.

Ravi Cunha was reunited with his parents Wednesday about 9am, about seven hours after 19-year-old Cuane Malaquias allegedly snatched him a Rio de Janeiro hospital room, where his mother and paternal mother were sleeping

Cuana Malaquia is seen in a hallways at Amelia Buarque de Hollanda Municipal Maternity Hospital in Rio de Janeiro carrying an oversized bag that allegedly contained Ravi Cunha, the hours-old newborn boy she took from a room Wednesday morning

Authorities rushed the baby back to the hospital and reunited him with his distraught parents around 9am. 

Hospital officials said that Malaquias most likely entered the facility through a balcony before she went inside the third-floor room. 

She allegedly took Cunha while his mother and paternal grandmother were sleeping

Surveillance footage showed Malaquias pacing the hospital with the baby in the bag before she walked out the front door without being detected.

The boy’s paternal grandfather, Davi Cunha, told reporters that his daughter-in-law had breasted the child and his wife changed his diaper before they took a nap.

‘Twenty minutes later, when (his wife) woke up to look at Ravi, he was no longer in the basket. Immediately, my wife tried to find out from the other roommates if someone had picked him up to calm him down, but no,’ he said, as quoted by Brazilian news outlet G1. ‘

Nivea Rabelo (left) and her husband Matheus Cunha (right) welcomed their first child, a boy, Tuesday but dealt with hours of anguish after the newborn was snatched from a Rio de Janeiro hospital Wednesday around 2am

Nivea Rabelo carries her newborn son, Ravi Cunha, who was taken from the Maria Amélia Buarque de Hollanda Maternity Hospital in Rio de Janeiro on early Wednesday morning

A Rio de Janeiro cop escorts Cuane Malaquias moments after she arrested her at her home for snatching a newborn baby from a hospital Wednesday

A Rio de Janeiro cop carries Ravi Cunha after he was located at the home of a 19-year-old suspect who had taken him from a hospital Wednesday around 2am. 

‘My wife went into despair, went to the nursing station, and they detected the disappearance.’

Four other newborn babies and their mothers were sleeping in the floor at the time of the incident, TV Globo reported.

G1 and Globo news reported Malaquias, a mother to a five-year-old girl, had been involved in a rocky relationship with a married man for five years.

The teenager mother also claimed to have been pregnant.

She told police that the newborn boy was hers when she was placed under arrest.

Ravi Cunha’s maternal grandmother confronted Malaquias outside the police station and told her: ‘Why did you do this to us? Why? May Jesus forgive you! He loves you! May He have mercy!’

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