What to Know
- The mother of the toddler found abandoned at a Harlem doorstep Thursday will be reunited with the boy
- Police are looking for her ex-boyfriend, who the mother says picked up her son from day care without permission and abandoned him
- The day care told the mother that the man showed a fake ID when he went to pick up the boy
The mother of the 1-year-old boy found alone at a Harlem stoop Thursday has been reunited with her son after a harrowing 24 hours in which she says her ex-boyfriend kidnapped the boy from day care to get back at her.
Alandria Clark learned from a social worker Friday that authorities would allow her take the toddler, DJ, home, after he spent the night in the care of Administration for Children's Services.
"I want to give him a hug, I want to make sure he's OK, I want to feed him," she said. "I just wanna hold my baby, I want my baby."
Hours later, the two were reunited.
Clark said she had dropped off DJ at Patricia Childcare Services in Harlem at around 8 a.m. Thursday. Three hours later, police got a 911 call for a toddler abandoned on the front stoop of an apartment building on West 132nd Street. The woman who found him told News 4 that he appeared scared and was whimpering.
The man last seen walking with the toddler, 22-year-old Antonio Stanton, is wanted by police. He's the ex-boyfriend of Clark who apparently did it to "to get back at me, I feel like to hurt me" after she broke up with him last week, she said.
"We had a fight earlier. He's upset because we recently broke up and he's basically getting back at me," she said. "He knows I care about DJ. That's all I have."
It's not clear why the day care released DJ to Stanton. The day care gets a list of approved adults to pick up each child, but Clark says no one was on DJ's list.
"I'm a single mother, no one's on the list for DJ. I pick him up and drop him off every day," she told reporters. "There's no reason for you to have given [DJ] to [Stanton]."
Workers there refused to speak with News 4 on Friday, but Clark recorded her conversation with them as they explained why they released DJ. Stanton had apparently shown a fake ID when he went to pick up DJ. Still, it doesn't explain how the boy was released at all to anyone other than Clark if she never gave the day care approval for anyone else to pick him up.
Local
Clark said she wants the day care shut down. It has had previous violations for poor recordkeeping for child pickup, although city records shows its last three inspections were clean.
