A 3-YEAR-OLD boy in Longgang District went missing Jan. 26, two days before the Chinese New Year, but thanks to local police who analyzed a massive amount of video, the child was returned to his family on the Chinese New Year’s Eve, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

    The boy’s father, surnamed Zhao, realized his child was missing while the boy was playing outside their home in the Bantian area in Longgang District on the afternoon of Jan. 26 and called police after searching for one hour in vain.

    The Longgang police analyzed surveillance camera footage around where the boy had disappeared and discovered that a woman around 30 years old had approached the child at around 3:40 p.m. and took the boy away by taxi.

    The boy’s family said that they did not know the woman shown in the video, so the police suspected that the woman had abducted the child.

    The Longgang police identified the woman as Wei, an unemployed 34-year-old from Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Records show that she had been temporarily living in a hotel in Longhua District. When police officers arrived at the hotel later that day, they found that Wei had brought the child back to the hotel before checking out.

    In a joint effort by police in several districts, it was confirmed that Wei had appeared at the Shenzhen Railway Station in Luohu District at 5 p.m. that day and was going to leave for Wuchang District in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei Province.

    Since the woman had already boarded a train that was scheduled to arrive in Wuchang without stopping once along the way, the police officers asked the train’s crew members to keep their eyes on the woman to ensure the child’s safety.

    Police at the Wuchang Railway Station arrested Wei when she arrived with the child the next morning. Meanwhile, Shenzhen police and the child’s father caught the earliest plane to Wuchang to pick up the child.

    Wei admitted that she had abducted the child because she wanted to bring a child home to cover up a lie.

    She said she had given birth to a child in 2015, but the infant died soon after birth. Wei then broke up with her boyfriend, who fathered the dead baby, but didn’t tell him that the child had died.

    Wei had gotten back in contact with her ex-boyfriend and the two decided to spend this year’s Chinese New Year holiday together, so she wanted to bring a child with her so that the man would not find out that their child had died two years ago.

    (Zhang Qian)