News

Actions

Missing Massachusetts toddler found beside road; ex-babysitter arrested

Posted

By Ray Sanchez

CNN

(CNN) -- If not for Anton Crosby, there's no telling what would have happened to the little girl who vanished from a Massachusetts home early Friday.

"'I think I just saw a little baby on the side of the road,'" Crosby recalled telling his wife, Marge, CNN affiliate WHDH reported.

Marge Crosby, sitting in the car with him, told him he was crazy.

"It could have been a doll, but I'm going to spin around," he said, according to WHDH.

Lyndon Albers, 2, lay in a pile of leaves, naked and shivering, according to various reports. Her hair had been shaved. Her body was bruised.

Anton Crosby put his coat around Lyndon and carried her into the warmth of his car.

"She was alert," Marge Crosby told WHDH.

A former babysitter, Abigail Hanna, 21, was arrested Friday on charges of kidnapping, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, assault and battery on a child and breaking and entering at night, according to a statement from the Hamilton police department.

"Evidence indicates that the abduction was not a random crime," the statement said.

The babysitter had been fired recently, WHDH reported.

It's unclear whether Hanna, who was being held without bail, has an attorney.

Police were still trying to determine a motive for the alleged abduction.

Little Lyndon was reunited with her family and hospitalized in fair condition, police said.

The search for Lyndon started with a frantic call to police by her mother at about 7 a.m. Friday.

The girl had been abducted sometime after 3 a.m. as her parents slept, according to police.

A massive search began around Hamilton, which is about 30 miles northeast of Boston.

It was about 10 a.m. when the Crosbys discovered her beside the road, in Rowley, about eight miles from the little girl's home.