Girls, 13 and 14, admit kidnapping toddler from Primark store

The father of a two-year-old abducted from a Primark store last April by girls aged 13 and 14 said the kidnappers used sweets as part of their plan to entice her away.

The girls admitted a charge of kidnap after they walked off with the girl and were found an hour and a half later, three miles away, after their descriptions were circulated in a major police operation.

It can now be reported the victim was the second child they intended to grab from the Primark store in Newcastle, having tried unsuccessfully to trick another little girl’s mother.

In both cases they picked on black children.

And at a previous court hearing, details emerged of alarming internet searches about “rape” that police found on a tablet computer.

A charge of kidnap with intent to commit a relevant sexual offence was dis- continued by the Crown Prosecution Service, as the teenagers’ pleas to the alternative kidnap charge were accepted.

The child was reunited with her mother unharmed after the abductors were traced by CCTV operators from the city centre, on to the Metro system and along Gosforth High St, into a park. They had also stolen dummies, baby milk, and a bottle to use as part of their plan on April 13.

After the girls admitted the charges at a youth court hearing at North Shields, North Tyneside, the little girl’s father said her mother will “never forget the guilt” of losing her.

Speaking as his daughter happily played around him, he said: “Her mother was on the phone and our daughter was in her pram.

"They offered her sweets, she was hysterical and they got her out and started playing with her around the shop.”

He said she was unlikely to remember anything of the abduction.

The kidnappers’ guilty pleas still did not explain their motive, he said. “The question remains: what was their intention?”

He also praised the search operation saying: “Thankfully, the police did an amazing job and the people of Newcastle as a city came together.”

At a previous youth court hearing in April, it was said that after the girls were arrested, a tablet computer was found containing searches for “rape”, “people getting raped”, “young people getting raped”, “poor little thing getting kidnapped and raped”.

The case will be before the youth court on July 4. The girls were remanded into the care of the local authority.