Left: Michael Garrison Raine (Bonneville County Sheriff's Office). Right: Surveillance video footage from the Costco warehouse in Idaho Falls, Idaho (Bonneville County Prosecutor's Office via East Idaho News).
An Idaho college student who was accused of walking away with a shopping cart carrying someone else's baby at Costco has had kidnapping charges against him dismissed.
Michael Garrison Raine, 24, was arrested in November and charged with second-degree kidnapping after police said he grabbed a shopping cart carrying a woman's 4-week-old baby and walked away. The alleged incident took place at a Costco warehouse in Idaho Falls on Nov. 20 and was caught on surveillance cameras inside the store.
During a press conference on Thursday, Bonneville County Prosecutor Randy Neal and Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson cited that surveillance footage as their reason for dismissing those charges against Raine, saying that the full video did not match up with what the baby's mother said happened.
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As Law&Crime previously reported, Raine, a student at Brigham Young University – Idaho, and the woman were both in the book aisle at Costco at the same time. The woman told police that she noticed Raine "lingering" around her and her cart, which was carrying her 4-week-old baby in a car seat. While the cart was within her reach, she turned away from it for a moment. When she turned around, she told police, the cart was gone.
Police said that she found the cart carrying her baby with Raine in the next aisle.
Raine was tracked down by Idaho Falls Police detectives and told them that he took the cart by mistake, thinking he was walking away with his own empty cart. He told police he walked back to the woman to apologize to her, telling detectives, "I was just so oblivious," adding, "I really must have been completely out of it."
At Thursday's press conference, Neal said that after reviewing the full surveillance video provided by Costco, detectives "did not see any kind of stalking behavior" by Raine. Authorities were also able to see that Raine walked up the aisle with his own cart, which was not seen on the initial cellphone video of the surveillance video that they were provided.
Neal explained that as part of the police investigation, detectives recreated the scene at the Costco with the woman after viewing the surveillance footage. When she went through the events as she remembered them, Neal said, "It was clear, early on, that some of the things that the mother was remembering [weren't] correct, according to the video." He added, "Some of her memories were inaccurate."
"We have a fairly definitive narrative now of what happened after he turned that corner. It's grainy, it's not a perfect view. But it certainly seems inconsistent with an intent to take the baby and leave the area," Neal said.
