Baby Stealing Case

In W. Samoa

Prom Our Own Correspondent Wtt a m • APIA, April 9.

HAT is probably the first baby kid napping case in Samoa, occurred at the end of March at Fugalei, Apia, when the month-old baby son of a Samoan baker disappeared during the early morning hours, and in spite of frantic searching of the neighbourhood could not be traced.

When the police were notified on the next morning police corporal Mai’ai re ported that a woman of Tapatapao named Siale had called at his home at z a.m. on the same morning with a small baby which she claimed was her own and had left later for Tapatapao, where her husband was a plantation labourer.

It appears that sometime previously she had told her husband that she was pregnant and that she wished to go to the island of Savai’i to give birth to the child.

A police patrol was despatched to the home of Siale where the baby was re covered and restored to his delighted parents. Not so delighted was Stale’s husband, who had been happy in his new “fatherhood.”

Siale stated that she had longed, after two years of marriage, to have a baby of her own and had thought the simplest way to achieve this would be to steal one belonging to someone else.