Former nursing student guilty

A former honors student at Highland Springs High School pleaded guilty yesterday to attempting to steal a baby from a hospital in May.

Ebony Tucker, 18, will be sentenced Feb. 12 in a case that her family has linked to the teenager's mental condition after the loss of her own child.

Defense lawyer Brent Jackson declined yesterday to discuss the specifics of Tucker's case. She has been under psychiatric evaluation and has been free on bond but is confined to home.

Tucker, a former nursing student who was dressed in hospital scrubs and who wore a stethoscope around her neck, made contact with the mother of a newborn in May on successive days and entered the woman's room at Henrico Doctors' Hospital (Forest campus), allegedly to take the baby to check its vital signs. She never actually held the infant and was tracked to a parking lot by suspicious hospital workers and an off-duty Henrico police officer.

Tucker faces from one to five years in prison. -- Bill McKelway