Clayton County

Girl who was kidnapped from hospital nearly a decade ago sees video of incident for first time

Channel 2 Action News was there when a little girl who was kidnapped two days after she was born, watched a video of the incident for the first time.

The child will celebrate a special birthday on the same day her kidnapper is set to be released from prison.

Channel 2′s Tom Jones sat down with Khloe McBride, 9, and her mother, Jas’Mere Parker.

That was when he learned Khloe had never seen the video of her kidnapping from the hospital days after she had entered the world.

He pulled up the video when Khloe said she wanted to see it. Khloe watched intently.

“When you see that, what do you think?” Jones asked.

“She’s crazy,” Khloe responded.

Khloe recently found out she had been kidnapped when she was 2 days old after she and her sister Googled their mother’s name.

Her mother had no idea.

“I didn’t think that conversation would happen so soon. But it is on Google and you know these kids these days — they’re all over their phones and the internet,” Parker said.

In January 2012, surveillance cameras captured Naquelle Ballard, 19, dressed in scrubs outside Parker’s room at Southern Regional Hospital in Clayton County.

Ballard went into Parker’s room and took Khloe, putting the newborn in her purse. Alarms went off. Maintenance workers tussled with Ballard and managed to get her purse with Khloe inside.

Parker is so thankful for the staff’s efforts.

“They’re a godsend,” she told Jones.

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Ballard was arrested soon after. She was convicted of kidnapping and false imprisonment. She received a sentence of 10 years behind bars.

Now that those 10 years are up, Ballard is getting out of prison on Jan. 2.

Parker thinks she should have gotten a longer sentence.

“I don’t think she had enough time to think about her actions,” she said.

Parker lives very close to Southern Regional Hospital. She’s concerned about her and Khloe running into Ballard.

“I still feel unsafe knowing that maybe it’s one day she wants her, and she’ll come back to her,” she said.

Jones interviewed Ballard after she was sentenced. She told him she regrets taking Khloe. She said she had a miscarriage and wanted to still give her boyfriend a baby.

Jones asked Parker if she forgives Ballard. She gave a brutally honest answer.

“I do. I do forgive. Well, no. I’m not going to say that. I don’t forgive her. I don’t forgive her because it’s just so many unanswered questions that I have,” she said.

Like why Parker and her child? And how was Ballard going to raise a daughter who didn’t look like her?

“I think she was ... she was young and dumb,” Parker said.

In a stroke of irony, Ballard is being released on the same day Khloe will celebrate her 10th birthday.

“It’s going to be bittersweet but I’m going to make the best of it. Hopefully, something happens where that date gets pushed back a couple of days,” Parker said half-jokingly.

The Department of Corrections told Jones that Ballard has maxed out her sentence and can’t be held past Jan. 2. She will therefore be released on that date.

Khloe is doing well. Her mother said Khloe had been afraid after learning she was kidnapped but she is back to her normal self.

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