PRICE, Utah, Dec. 21, 2021 (Gephardt Daily) — A woman was arrested after police say she grabbed a 3-year-old girl from the pool area of a Price hotel, and attempted to leave with the child.
Brittany Michelle Ross, who will turn 39 on Thursday, faces a single charge child kidnapping, a first-degree felony.
Price City police first became aware of Ross after several callers reported a woman crying in the middle of the road near 150 Hospital Drive. The woman initially refused to talk to an off-duty EMPS worker, then the officer who arrived.
The woman, eventually identified as Ross, was transported to Castleview Hospital, and the officer went to the Ramada hotel to ask if the woman had rented a room. Hotel staffers said the woman had checked in the previous night with a male, and that Ross “had followed a family around the hotel lobby and attempted to follow them into the pool.”
As officers questioned the staff, a family checking out said a woman had tried to take their daughter on Sunday, and identified her as Ross from an officer’s photo.
“The father stated he and his children were going to the pool to go swimming and were walking down the stairs,” the officer’s account in Ross’ probable cause statement says. “The father stated the female had been standing on the stairs and appeared to wait for them…. The father stated as they walked by and down the stairs, Brittney grabbed the 3-year-old daughter and picked her up in her arms and proceeded to walk away quickly.
“The father struggled with the female and was able to get his daughter back. When the father took his 3-year old daughter back, he informed me Brittney kept saying to
him ‘give her to me.'”
The father said he did not know the woman, but she had been staying in the room across the hall from him, with a male.
Surveillance footage supported the father’s account of what happened in the pool area.
Ross, who the reporting officer said lives in Texas and has no Utah ties, was booked into the Carbon County jail, and is being held without bail.
