Perhaps the greatest gift that the Zhao family received this Lunar New Year is the rescue of their three-year-old boy, who was kidnapped last Thursday. The boy was rescued after being kidnapped by a middle-aged woman for 15 hours.
The father reported shortly after 17:00 on Thursday that their son has gone missing while playing near their home in Shenzhen. The family searched for the little boy for over an hour but were unsuccessful.
Through a surveillance video, the local police determined that shortly after 15:40, the boy was taken away in a taxi by a middle-aged woman whom the family did not know.
The police identified the woman surnamed Wei, who is a 34-year-old migrant worker from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. The woman was unemployed and lived in a hotel in Shenzhen.
When the authorities arrived at the hotel, they found that the woman took the boy to the hotel but had already left.
Police followed Wei to the Luohu Railway Station in Shenzhen and were tipped by the railway police that the woman boarded a train with the bay to go to Wuchang, Huhang Province at 18:00. She was spotted on the train and when it arrived in Wuchang just a little after 6:00 last Friday, the police arrested her and rescued the Zhao's little boy.
Wei said she took the boy and pass him off as her own son to rekindle her relationship with her ex-boyfriend. She gave birth to a boy in 2015 in Shenzhen but the baby died shortly after. She broke up with her boyfriend after giving birth but the man was unaware of the baby's death. This year, Wei wanted to meet her ex-boyfriend in Hubei for the Lunar New Year.
With the fast thinking of the police, they were able to intercept Wei just before she could have gotten farther away from Shenzhen.