San Bernardino Mother Reunited With Son Who Was Kidnapped 21 Years Ago [Video]
https://youtu.be/69bHAwKj1Ks
A mother in San Bernardino, California, has been reunited with her son, who was kidnapped 21 years ago by his father, thanks to DNA analysis. ABC7 News posted an article describing the emotional reunion between the San Bernardino mother and her long-lost son. Steve Hernandez was only 18-months-old when his father kidnapped him and took him to Mexico. His mother, Maria Mancia, said that she came home one day in 1995 and found that her son’s father had left – not only with their son, but with all of the photos of their son and identifying paperwork. Mancia went to the police, but the case eventually went cold.
San Bernardino mother reunited with kidnapped child 21 years later https://t.co/QdiplyszLn pic.twitter.com/Qa0m6OWqnc
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 10, 2016
In 2012, the case went to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Child Abduction Unit. According to an article by The Tribune, the San Bernadino mother had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, with her husband and son in 1995, and they were having relationship struggles. When Mancia came home and found that her husband had left and taken their son, she was devastated. She had to get the one picture of her son she has kept all these years from a relative. Mancia immediately reported her son missing, and the Sheriff’s Department and DA investigators had been working the case ever since, even though it was a cold case.
When the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Child Abduction Unit got the case, they started searching for him in several states, but it wasn’t until February of this year that they got a strong tip that Hernandez was in Mexico. The unit did find that Hernandez, now 22, was living in Puebla, Mexico, and on Thursday, June 9, Hernandez was brought to the U. S. to meet his mother in San Bernardino.
https://www.facebook.com/News8/posts/10154216806127552
When the CAU found Hernandez, they discovered that the father, Valentin Hernandez, had been missing and was presumed dead according to authorities in Mexico. The investigator who led the search, Karen Cragg, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez “delicately.” Cragg told the Associated Press on Thursday that they used a ruse to contact Hernandez, they said they were investigating his father and needed his DNA to help locate him.
“We didn’t want to scare him off. We weren’t sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully.”
They also didn’t tell the mother that they had found Hernandez initially, because they were afraid that false hope might be created, so they waited until they received proof. After they received the DNA sample, investigator Cragg urged the Department of Justice to hurry on the test, as DNA tests can take several months. Cragg said they called her within two weeks, telling her the DNA was a match. Cragg and her partner drove to Mancia’s house right away and said that, at first, the mother was not convinced.
“It was like she didn’t believe us at first. She began to cry. She said she couldn’t believe he was still alive.”
Since Steve Hernandez is a U. S. citizen, authorities had no problem with immigration when they returned Steve to his mother. Hernandez’s father had told him that his mother had abandoned them, and now he knows the truth, and he told KABC how he felt:
“I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she’s alive in another country, it’s emotional.”
Hernandez didn’t have any personal papers, but his mother had his birth certificate and more, which is good since Hernandez is planning on staying in the U.S. now that he has been reunited with his mother. Hernandez also found that he has four other siblings and is hoping to attend law school in the U. S.
[Photo Via Youtube]
