Couple’s pain after woman offers to hold baby, then disappears without a trace

A couple’s five-month-old baby boy is missing after a woman who visited them in Utawala offered to hold him to allow his mother time to finish washing her clothes on Wednesday afternoon.

At the time, baby Harold Ochieng was crying and his mother, 24-year-old Pauline Ilenje, who had strapped her baby to her back, needed time to finish with her laundry.

“She requested to hold him until I was done with cleaning and I agreed,” said Ochieng’s mother.

Unbeknown to her, the intention of the woman, only identified as Aisha, was not good. Pauline unstrapped her child and handed him over to the woman without any qualms. Aisha is said to have been visiting the couple's neighbour that day.

After finishing her laundry, Pauline realised that the woman who had offered to hold her baby had vanished.

What followed later were hours of panic and a painful search for her baby as the reality that her child had been stolen started hitting home.

Shocked at the turn of events, Pauline made frantic calls to her husband David Ochieng (43), a casual labourer, but she could not reach him.

“I then rushed to Utawala police post to file a report where the officers told me to look for my neighbour and report back to the station with him,” she said.

At around 1pm, her husband called her and informed her that he would join her in the search but, before getting home, he called their neighbour asking for the whereabouts of his visitor.

At around 4pm, the neighbour returned and left in a rush but the couple caught up with him and reported back to Utawala police post for questioning.

She came and left quickly

“Officers at the station then asked us to search for Aisha, whose house we traced to Githunguri in Kiambu County. However, we did not find her there. The door was open but no one was inside. Neighbours told us they spotted her come and leave with a baby and a bag,” Pauline’s husband says.

The couple then returned to Utawala to update the police on their findings, but they were referred to Ruai police station where they were asked to continue with the baby’s search until yesterday afternoon.

“We wondered how we could continue with the search even past curfew hours but we did it anyway without a police escort,” said the baby’s father.

The couple decided to return to Githunguri where they were hopeful that they might find the woman at her house.

Unfortunately, the woman had not returned. Instead, they found a young girl identified as Diana who confirmed that the woman lives there but was not in.

Yesterday, the couple returned to Ruai police station where they recorded a statement and shared their child’s image for circulation.

“The officers informed us that they are tracking the woman’s phone to establish her whereabouts,” Pauline told the Nation.

Police also questioned the couple’s neighbour and the girl who was found at the woman’s house in Githunguri.

“Our neighbour now claims that the woman was his laundry person and not the girlfriend,” she said.

Officers at Ruai police station declined to comment on the matter.