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There were new clues Monday night in the search for a baby boy and his suspected kidnapper. A SARAA alert remained in effect in the disappearance of 5-month-old Cortez Rose of Madison, Illinois. One potential clue did not pan out. Surveillance video from a bus stop up the road in Granite City turned out to be video of someone else. Police still had other leads.
The boy's family was out trying to scrape up more."We're going around everywhere trying to find him," said the boy's Godmother, Tyanna Staple, showing pictures of Cortez and his suspected kidnapper, Danielle Medina, 17, to customers at a local grocery store.
The boy's mother, Makeela Rose, 16, cried as customers said Medina looked familiar but they hadn't seen her with the baby. She hasn't seen her little boy since Saturday.
She admitted letting Medina take the boy for a walk in a brown and tan stroller. The stroller had yet to be recovered Monday.
Medina came to the area from New York with her boyfriend a few months ago, authorities said.
She left a home in 15-hundred block of 5th street in Madison with the child and never came back. Medina has been staying with Makeela Rose since Friday, June 5, 2009-less than 24 hours before the abduction. Reports are also confirming that Medina has been "wanting a baby of her own" and has told several people that she was pregnant when in reality she was not.
"I'm hurt. It's my fault," the boy's mother cried. "I'm like, 'there he goes'. I never should have left him leave with her. And I should have just taken him with me like I started to [do]."
Medina is short, about 5'0" tall, 120lbs, with black and orange bangs in her hair.
She's now wanted on an arrest warrant for aggravated kidnapping in Madison County; bail set at $500,000.Cortez Rose has birthmarks on his right shoulder and right ankle. Authorities say he was wearing and red shirt and his diaper when he disappeared.
People have reported Medina and the baby at a bus stop in Granite City and most recently at the Orr-Weathers and Norman E. Owens housing developments in East St. Louis.
Authorities were focusing their search there Monday and getting help from the neighbors."...knocking on doors on some suspect houses where we think the abductor might be hiding at or staying at right now and her boyfriend," said Madison police chief, Steven Shelby.
"Me and one of my friends, we've been scouting the areas, trying to see if the young lady maybe put the baby in a trash [dumpster]," said resident, Derex Brooks. "And not just that - going door to door, trying to find out her whereabouts."
"I just hope if she watches [the news] and she sees how hurt I am and she brings my baby back," the baby's mother said through tears.
The case hit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website.
Authorities said they did not know of a motive. They did not believe Medina intended to harm the baby.
Her past felonies in New York include child endangerment.
photo/poster courtesy: National Center of Missing and Exploited Children
some sources: KTVI
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