A woman kidnapped as a baby from a hospital crib has been reunited with her parents after 23 years apart.

Carlina now with her own daughter, six-year-old Samani

Carlina White, who was snatched when just 18 days old, beamed with delight as she hugged mother Joy White and father Carl Tyson at a hotel room in New York, the city where she was abducted.
‘I'm just amazed. I feel like I'm in a dream,’ said Carlina, raised under a different name by Ann Pettway, who is now wanted on suspicion of kidnap.

a woman who had allegedly pretended to be a nurse and had comforted Carlina’s parents before her disappearance.
But officers could not track down this mystery woman and, as it turned out, the best investigator on the case was Carlina herself.
Living under the name Nejdra Nance in Bridgeport, Connecticut, she had long suspected she was at least adopted.
Pettway, said to be a drug addict who also exposed Carlina to weapons lying around, could never provide the girl with a genuine birth certificate.
Eventually, when pressed with questions, Pettway lied and said the kidnap victim’s real mother was a drug addict who had given her up.
Later Carlina found a baby picture of herself when she visted a website that  linked to the Centre for Missing and Exploited
‘It was like looking at a picture of my daughter,’ Carlina said. ‘I thought, maybe this could be it.’
But now, as she is finally reunited with her real family, those years of pain have begun to melt away.
Seeing her grown-up daughter for the first time, Joy bursted with pride during their emotional reuinion.
‘I see myself, too,’ she told the New York Post. ‘I see my face, but with a smaller body,’ sweetly hugging the daughter she had longed to hold.
‘I see Carl in her eyes. I see my forehead, my eyebrows, my chin.
‘She's just like me,’ Joy said, laughing.
‘We like the same colors. We like our houses to be clean. We can't go to sleep without the dishes being washed.’
Authorities are looking at whether federal officials should take over because the statute of limitations may have expired in New York.
There is no limitation in federal missing children cases. FBI officials in Bridgeport were looking into the case there.
‘We have our suspicions in this case, but you need more than that for probable cause,’ said a spokesman for the New York Police Department


 ‘I'm so happy. At the same time, it's a funny feeling because everything's brand-new. It's like being born again.’

Together again after two decades: Carla White with parents Joy White and Carl Tyson reunited in New York

‘When I see my mother, I see myself,’ she told the New York Post.
 ‘I see the smile, the lips the chin, and the legs - we all have flat knees. I see my face in both my parents. I get my eyes from my father.’
Carlina, who now has her own daughter, six-year-old Samani, was abducted in 1987 from Harlem Hospital where she was lying ill with a fever.
However, the case went cold as there was no CCTV at the time and no witnesses spotted anyone taking her.

 Parents in agony after her abduction from Harlem Hospital in 1987
 Carlina White as an infant

Ann Pettway is accused of kidnapping Carlina after raising her under the name of Nejdra Nance in Bridgeport, Connecticut

But officers could not track down this mystery woman and, as it turned out, the best investigator on the case was Carlina herself.