Police continue search for newborn snatched from Nashville home by woman posing as agent

Search continues for baby snatched from Tenn. home

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Police worked Thursday to retrace the steps of a mother whose newborn son was snatched from her home by a woman posing as an immigration agent who stabbed her several times.

Maria Gurrolla’s baby has been missing since Tuesday. Metro Nashville Police have released a blurry surveillance photo of a Kia Spectra that parked next to her at a nearby Walmart shortly before he was taken and may have followed her out of the parking lot.

One of the first people to respond to the brutal attack on Gurrolla was neighbor Eric Peterson, who said he heard a bang on his door in his quiet Nashville neighborhood and opened it to find her covered in blood.

She pleaded with him to go rescue her children, whom she had left behind to seek help after a woman stabbed her with a kitchen knife. By the time Peterson got to the home, the baby was gone.

Gurrolla told reporters she had never seen the woman, who showed up at her door, threatened to arrest her, then got a knife from the home and stabbed her several times.

“I need my baby back,” the 30-year-old mother said Wednesday through an interpreter outside Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Gurrolla said she did not see the woman take the baby because she ran to Peterson’s home. Peterson told The Associated Press she was “covered from her head to her toe with blood” with gashes on her neck and upper chest.

Gurrolla asked him to save her children from the “lady in the kitchen” who had a butcher knife. When Peterson got there, he saw a woman speeding away from the home. He brought Gurrolla’s 3-year-old daughter back safely to his house, but found no baby, he said.

Gurrolla, who had a long scratch on her face, said the woman, whom she described as white and “robust,” did not say anything about wanting to take the baby.

“She said she was an immigration officer and she was there to arrest her,” said Gurrolla’s cousin, serving as interpreter. It was not clear if Gurrolla was an immigrant, but police said she has lived in Nashville for at least 10 years. The cousin said the family did not want to discuss her legal status.

A similar case happened in Nashville in 2005. Christina Delarosa Sanchez pleaded guilty to the murder of Hilda Griselda Gutierrez and her 3-year-old daughter in a foiled plot to steal the woman’s infant son. She was sentenced to two life sentences.

According to court records, Sanchez visited food stamp offices looking for Hispanic women who had recently given birth. She approached Gutierrez and offered to help her get legal documents that would allow her to travel out of the country. Later, she showed up at Gutierrez’s home with a man and they stabbed and strangled Gutierrez and her daughter. The attempted kidnapping was foiled when the infant’s father arrived at the home just after the killings.

In Gurrolla’s case, Dr. William Dutton said she had a penetrating chest wound and her lung had collapsed. He said she also had deep stab wounds to her neck, but was in stable condition. She still has physical signs of having given birth recently, and Dutton described the birth as complicated but declined to elaborate.

A blue yard sign outside Gurrolla’s home in the community of mostly single-family brick houses in south Nashville announces, “IT’S A BOY!” Police spokeswoman Kristin Mumford said she doesn’t know whether Gurrolla was targeted because of the sign.

Peterson said as he was making his way to Gurrolla’s house, a woman with a ponytail was behind the wheel of a gray 2-door Honda that sped away from the home.

Tuesday night, police issued an Amber Alert with a picture and description of a 30-year-old woman. They questioned a woman matching that description in Buffalo, N.Y., Wednesday but determined she wasn’t involved.

A sketch artist is working to come up with a drawing of the kidnapper’s face.

“We don’t have any indication at this point that this is anything but a stranger child abduction,” Mumford said. “We’re not ruling out anything, but we have no reason to believe that the family is not being completely truthful.”

Mumford said police are retracing the mother’s activities before the attack, such as the visit to Walmart. The Kia sedan they released a photo of had out-of-state tags, but they couldn’t tell which state.