North Carolina – On April 5 Linda Mae Everett, 36, entered a neonatal ward at New Hanover Regional Medical Center without authorization. As CBS 17 reports, the woman who was denied entry into a North Carolina children's hospital, charged with felonies and then accused of attempting to steal babies denied that's what she was trying to do. She was released on a $10,000 bond. Everett even has an excuse; she was just trying to give bibles to babies. She claims she would never take someone else’s child. “I’m pregnant, a retired firefighter, and have had to bury a child. … This is not who I am. I am a mother, and I would never take someone else’s child.”
Everett said she went to the lobby of the children’s hospital, presented her driver’s license and was not denied entry, but spoke to a nurse about dropping off the bibles. The nurse then escorted her to the children’s wing of the hospital where the nurse told her they had three births that day.
According to Everett, she delivered three bibles and was stopped by security.
“All I was doing was giving mothers a Bible. I do it all the time,” Everett said. “I have been to that hospital four or five times before and have never gotten stopped.”
NHRMC stated Tuesday Everett was not escorted to the unit by a nurse.
When hospital staff saw that Everett didn’t have a visitor’s badge, they alerted NHRMC police who later questioned her.
Barbara Buechler, hospital administrator for the Women’s and Children’s unit, says the hospital has an extensive layered security system in place and the first line of defense was breached.
“We have a layered system, first you must show ID to get a visitors badge, then you get a proximity badge that gives you access to locked areas, if you don’t have those you are stopped by a staff member,” Buechler stated.
The North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC) issued a bulletin on April 13 saying Everett "is believed to be going to neonatal units of hospitals in North and South Carolina possibly in attempts to abduct a child." Everett's court appearance in New Hanover County is set for May 21.
Photo Credits: Pregnancy Magazine
