A woman in Texas has been arrested for allegedly trying to buy a fellow Walmart shopper’s son for USD 500,000.
The incident reportedly took place in the city of Crockett, which is located in Houston County, in the southern US state of Texas, on Thursday, 13th January, resulting in the woman’s arrest on Tuesday, 18th January.
The woman has been named as Rebecca Lanette Taylor, 49, and she was taken into custody by the police and charged with the third-degree felony offence of trying to purchase a child.
Lt. Ahleea Price of the Crockett Police Department was on patrol on 13th January when she received a call from the mother of the child saying that a “white woman with blonde hair approached her in the Crockett Walmart, wanting to purchase her son.”
The mother, who has not been named, explained that she was waiting to scan her purchases at a self checkout, with a baby sitting in a car seat and a one-year-old sitting in the shopping trolley.
She said that the woman came up to her and began talking about her son’s “blonde hair and blue eyes”, asking “how much you could purchase him for”.
The mum reportedly tried to laugh the comment off, believing that it was a joke, but the suspect reportedly told her that she had USD 250,000 in her car in the car park.
The mum declined, but before she could leave the supermarket, the woman, who the mum noticed was reportedly with an unnamed Hispanic woman, asked her what her child’s name was.
Despite declining to disclose it, the women apparently already knew it and started calling the child by it.
The mum left the Walmart but the two women reportedly followed her to the car park, which is where the suspect identified as Taylor allegedly began screaming at the mother that she would give her USD 500,000 for the child “because she wanted him and she was going to take him”.
The mum locked both her children in her car and stood her ground and eventually the two suspects left the scene in a black SUV.
Lt. Price went to the suspect’s home address to question her. The officer reportedly said in a report: “She told me that she doesn’t like thieves, then she stated I could speak with her attorney and to get off her ‘precipice’. She slammed the door shut.”
Lt. Price secured an arrest warrant for the suspect from Houston County District Attorney Donna Kaspar. Taylor was arrested and taken into custody on 18th January. She has been charged with the third-degree felony of trying to purchase a child.
She faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a USD-10,000 fine. She is being held at the Houston County Jail on a bond of USD 50,000.
