Pretoria, September 17: A delighted Durban mother, who was reunited with her kidnapped daughter, said on Wednesday: “It feels like I’ve been given my life back.”
Patricia Naicker, 45, spoke moments after she was reunited with her two-year-old daughter Carina, who was kidnapped last week.
She scooped Carina up into her arms, squeezed her tightly and kissed her non-stop, saying: “My baby, my baby” as tears streamed down her face.
“I’m never going to let go of her again, not to anyone or anything in the whole wide world.”
“Even when I go to the bathroom, I’ll take her with me,” said Naicker.
Man known to the family
Naicker and her daughter were reunited on Wednesday afternoon after Carina was kidnapped in Durban last Friday, allegedly by a man known to them.
The man, who lived in a centre for the homeless in Durban, where the Naickers also stay, was supposed to babysit Carina while her mother was at work.
He allegedly dropped Carina off at a hair salon in Le Marais, Pretoria on Monday morning, and said he had found her alone on a train in Johannesburg.
Naicker said she had been unable to eat or sleep since she had realised that Carina was missing on Friday. She just cried, put up posters of Carina, and searched everywhere for her daughter.
Happy to be home
On Monday, two Durban police officers heard over the radio about Carina who had been abandoned in Pretoria, and immediately made the connection between the two incidents.
Constables Nkosinathi Sabelo and Sipho Ngubo from the Point police station in Durban brought Naicker to Pretoria on Wednesday to fetch her little girl.
Naicker referred to the people at the Wyse Uiltjie Academy in Mayville, who had been caring for Carina while she was in Pretoria, by simply saying: “They’re the best.”
Carina was usually very chatty, but when asked whether she was happy to be back with her mother, she just smiled.
—-Agencies