United States Attorney Richard B. Roper
Northern District of Texas

WOMAN SENTENCED TO 20 YEARS IN PRISON, WITHOUT PAROLE,
FOR KIDNAPPING NEWBORN BABY FROM HOSPITAL

LUBBOCK, Texas — Rayshaun Parson, 22, who pled guilty in August to one count of kidnapping, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings to 20 years in prison, announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper of the Northern District of Texas. Parson, of Clovis, New Mexico, has been in custody since her arrest in March 2007 by federal agents on charges outlined in a federal criminal complaint. A federal grand jury in Lubbock returned an indictment later that month charging her with one count of kidnapping.

On March 9, 2007, Rayshaun Parson, who was then age 21, traveled from Clovis, New Mexico, to Lubbock, Texas, and while in Lubbock, visited maternity wards at University Medical Center and Covenant Lakeside Hospital, observing the newborn babies.

At approximately 12:32 a.m. on March 10, 2007, Parson, wearing medical scrubs, entered Covenant Lakeside Hospital. After taking baby Mychael, Parson twice attempted to use the elevator to leave the hospital, however, on both occasions, an alarm sounded and the elevator failed to operate because the baby was wearing a security sensor on her leg. Parson then went to a vacant room and removed the security sensor and identification band from the baby so that she could leave the hospital with the baby. She then left the hospital, concealing the three-day-old infant under her coat. She placed the baby, who was suffering from jaundice, in her car and drove back to her home in Clovis, New Mexico, approximately 100 miles from Lubbock.

Parson was not related to the victim in any way, and did not know the victim or her family. She admitted that she understood the nature and consequences of her act in kidnapping the baby, the wrongfulness of her act, and that kidnapping a baby is against the law, in that shepulled the hood of her coat over her face when leaving the hospital with the baby, concealed the baby under her coat, and discarded incriminating evidence of the crime in a dumpster more than a block away from her residence upon arriving back in Clovis.

After an Amber Alert was issued, a lead was received by the Lubbock Police Department which resulted in the infant being located, the day after the kidnapping, at a residence in Clovis, New Mexico by the Clovis Police Department.

U.S. Attorney Roper commended the investigative efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Lubbock Police Department, and the Clovis, New Mexico, Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven M. Sucsy and Dick Baker of the Lubbock, Texas, U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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