Kamiyah Mobley was nearing adulthood when she learned that the woman who she believed was her mother was actually a kidnapper who abducted her from a maternity ward years before.
But after being raised by Gloria Williams, Mobley still views the convicted felon as her mother and is begging for her release from prison. A judge recently denied Williams’ motion to have her sentence reduced from 18 years to 9 years, First Coast News
reports.The ruling comes after Mobley filed a plea asking the judge to show mercy to Williams despite abducting her years before. It was June 2018 when Williams was sentenced to 18 years in prison for disguising herself as a nurse and kidnapping Mobley from a maternity ward in 1998.
Williams was at the University Medical Center (now UF Health Jacksonville) in July 1998 when she pretended to befriend Kamiyah Mobley’s mother, Shanara Mobley, who was just 15 years old at the time. Once inside the maternity ward, Williams stole her baby eight hours after she was born.
The case went cold after a months-long manhunt for the child. But Williams’ luck ran out in 2017 when authorities arrested her at her home in Walterboro, South Carolina, when Mobley was 18 years old.
In December, Williams and Mobley both sent letters to the judge asking to have her sentence reduced, News 4 Jax reports.
“I ask for the court’s grace and mercy, as I need my mother here,” Mobley wrote.
Both Williams and Mobley said there was no justification for the kidnapping while asking for leniency. In her motion, Williams claims
the three years she has spent in prison helped to rehabilitate her and understand her wrongs.“I have a new perspective on life as a result of my experiences while incarcerated. Rehabilitation within the Department of Corrections comes only to those who sincerely desire to strive for self-betterment and change,” Williams wrote.