Durban – A two-week-old baby who was kidnapped in Durban has been found safe, and a 21-year-old woman has been arrested following an extensive overnight search by Reaction Unit South Africa (RUSA).
Baby Owami Lonathando Sindane was recovered at 9:15 AM on Monday in the vicinity of the Westville Pavilion Shopping Centre, KwaZulu-Natal. Her alleged kidnapper, a 21-year-old woman from Chesterville, was apprehended and later identified by the baby’s mother, Bongiwe Sindane.
The search began on Sunday night after Bongiwe Sindane reported her child missing at 10:00 PM to the RUSA Operations Centre. Officers immediately launched a public appeal and distributed the baby’s image. Over the next 11 hours, RUSA received 34 tip-offs from across the country, including Pietermaritzburg, Limpopo, Cape Town, and Johannesburg.
According to RUSA, suspicious sightings of women returning home with babies prompted increased surveillance and strategic roadblocks in Chesterville early Monday morning.
A RUSA helicopter was also deployed to aid in narrowing the search.
“A woman was spotted behaving suspiciously with a new born baby. When Officers stopped her, it was established that the child in her possession was Baby Sindane.
“The woman was placed under arrest and has to be removed from the area after a mob threatened to kill her. She was detained at FCS SAPS Cato Manor & positively identified by the mother as the woman that had kidnapped her baby,” RUSA said.
In a statement to RUSA officers, the suspect confessed to kidnapping the child after suffering a miscarriage on 24 April 2025. She said she met Bongiwe Sindane at a local clinic and, desperate to prevent her boyfriend from leaving her, devised a plan to steal the baby and pass it off as her own.
Further investigation revealed that the baby had been fed only water from a bottle since the abduction, and no infant formula had been purchased.
Authorities have confirmed that Baby Owami is in good health and has been reunited with her mother. Charges against the suspect are being processed, and she is expected to appear in court later this week.
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Picture: X: Facebook/RUSA
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
