Kidnapped ‘dead’ girl returns to her mother

A SIX-YEAR-OLD girl who was kidnapped as a baby and was thought to have died in a fire until she was spotted at a birthday party by her mother, has been returned to her.

Luzaida Cuevas quickly ushered the girl through a back door into her Northeast Philadelphia home. The girl, dressed in a blue hooded jacket and pink pants, giggled but did not speak.

Ms Cuevas, 31, and the child she named Delimar Vera were earlier officially reunited at state family services offices in Burlington County, New Jersey, the mother's lawyer, Alexander Murphy, said in a statement.

The family planned a "small, private gathering of friends and family" to celebrate, he said.

Police allege that a relative, Carolyn Correa, snatched the 10-day-old girl from her cot in December 1997, torched the house to cover her crime and raised the infant as her own.

Correa, a cousin by marriage of the girl's father, has been charged with arson, kidnapping and 13 other counts. Correa, 42, of Willingboro, New Jersey, has been held on $1 million bail since her arrest on March 2.

Ms Cuevas said she instantly recognised the girl as her daughter at a January 24 birthday party. DNA tests established that Ms Cuevas and Pedro Vera were the girl's biological parents, police said.

Ms Cuevas and Mr Vera, who are no longer a couple, were awarded legal custody of their daughter last Friday. The three have met several times to get acquainted and to prepare for the child's transition to her mother's home. Child psychologists believe the change will be traumatic for the girl, who has left the only home and family she ever knew.

Her parents will try to alleviate any distress and confusion by calling her by the name she was given by her alleged kidnapper Aaliyah Hernandez.