Kidnapped Yair Anthony Carrillo found safe in Alabama Suspect Arrested

by Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
Oct. 5, 2009

Editor’s Note: We at the Chronicle publish weekly photos of missing kids. And it warms our hearts when children have been found or recovered. So that there families could have some closure. Yair was published in our Oct. 2, 2009 issue.

We hope you will look at all the Children that we have published in the past and future. Our goal is to bring them all home. We need your help!

By The Associated Press
October 5, 2009

A newborn boy abducted by a knife-wielding woman posing as an immigration agent was safe Saturday and being held by child welfare officials as authorities charged a woman with his kidnapping.

Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, said Maria Gurrolla got to hold her week-old baby, Yair Anthony Carillo, on Saturday afternoon, but was not being allowed to take him home yet. Gurrolla, 30, and her three other children — ages 3, 9 and 11 — visited with the baby, then all four of the children were taken into state custody, Johnson said.

“Our focus is on the children, and under the current situation right now, we think the safest thing to do is take the children into state custody,” said Johnson, who declined to elaborate.

Joel Siskovic, an FBI special agent in the Memphis division, said he did not have details about whether the parents were also under protective custody. “As of now, there’s no indication that there’s an ongoing threat to the family,” he said.

Nashville police said the baby was found in good health at a home in Ardmore, Ala., about 80 miles south of Nashville near the Tennessee line.

Earlier Saturday, officials said the baby would remain with a foster family as authorities made arrangements for Gurrolla to be reunited with her son.

“This baby is a week old, and this child has spent half his life away from his family. I think it’s time we reunite them,” said My Harrison, a special agent with the FBI in Tennessee.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn identified the arrested woman as Tammy Renee Silas, 39, of Ardmore. Federal authorities formally charged her Saturday with kidnapping. The Morgan County Sheriff’s office said Silas was picked up by U.S. Marshals on Saturday morning, though it was not known where she was being taken.

The baby and Silas were found about 10 p.m. CDT in Ardmore, and Silas did not resist arrest, Gwyn said. Authorities said they had no word on a possible motive. Police in Nashville did not know if Silas has a lawyer.

The infant was taken from his home Tuesday, just four days after he was born. His mother told police a heavyset white woman with blonde hair arrived at her home posing as an immigration agent and attacked her with a knife.

Gurrolla told investigators that during the abduction, she heard the woman make a phone call and tell someone in Spanish words to the effect of “the job is done” and that the mother “was dying,” said Siskovic, the FBI agent.

Siskovic said Silas took the victim’s cell phone, which helped investigators locate Silas.

He would not comment further on the possibility that Silas was not working alone.

At a Wednesday news conference, Gurrolla told reporters she had never seen the woman, who 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 a neighbor’s home. The neighbor, Eric Peterson, told The Associated Press that Gurrolla 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.

Officials believe Silas followed Gurrolla and her baby from a local office of the Women, Infants and Children program and to a Walmart store. “I think it’s clear that she was targeting people at that location,” Siskovic said.

The task force of local, state and federal investigators got a break when they found that a video camera in the Walmart parking lot had captured the license plate of the car seen following the mother and baby, according to the arrest warrant.

Gurrolla’s home was quiet Saturday morning, where a cleaning crew had been working inside. Some neighbors had placed flowers outside the house, and many neighbors said they were relieved Yair had been found.

Cathy Nahirny, a senior analyst for infant abduction cases at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said there have been at least two other recent cases where an abductor used a ploy similar to the one used in this case.

“We need to get the word out to our immigrant communities,” Nahirny said. “Anybody that claims they are from federal law enforcement agencies, you have the right and you should ask for photo identification.”

Abductions of infants by strangers are rare, with only nine reported cases so far this year and five last year, according to the missing child center.

Nahirny said immigrant families have been targets of child abductions because of the assumption they will not tell police.

Gurrolla is Latina but her immigration status isn’t clear. She was released from the hospital Thursday.

Source AP NY Daily News