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1 p.m. update

Investigators in the abuction of baby Bryan will have a daily press conference at 4 p.m. starting this afternoon.

As of 1 p.m., Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman Larry Long had no new details to report from what had already been released Saturday.

At 4:50 p.m. Friday, A woman driving a black SUV abducted Bryan Dos Santos Gomes and Maria de Fatima Ramos Dos Santos, 23, at knifepoint about 4:50 p.m. in Fort Myers. The woman in the SUV dropped the mother off in Estero and rode off with Bryan, who turned 1 month old today.

The suspect is described as 28 to 30 years old with black, straight hair partially in a bun, standing 5 feet 4 inches, and was last seen wearing a black T-shirt. She was light-skinned and spoke Spanish to the victims, police said, and she was asking for directions to Pine Manor, a neighborhood south of Fort Myers. She was driving a black SUV with peeling window tint.

Police believe the suspect could have driven as far as Miami or Tampa.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Fort Myers Police Department at (239) 334-4155.

Police believe the woman who kidnapped a 29-day-old baby was trying to replace a child of her own. The woman may have been pregnant and lost her baby or she may have had a young child that died recently, said Sgt. Mike Carr of the Fort Myers Police Department.

"It's our belief that she was looking for a baby," Carr said. "She was very cunning. She had a baby seat in her car, a diaper bag in her car. She was prepared to do this."

Authorities are asking anyone who might know of someone who recently lost a baby to be on the lookout. Police are following several leads but have not made an arrest.

About 25 officers from local, state and national departments are working to find Bryan Dos Santos Gomes. Police sent out state-wide alerts. Two officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are also working with authorities. National news outlets have also taken an interest, which Carr said is helping deliver the message to a larger audience.

Several Brazilian women in the community recently came forward and offered to travel to Miami and Tampa to hand out fliers, Carr said.

Check back shortly after 4 p.m. for news update from the police press conference.

Today's story

Maria de Fatima Ramos Dos Santos’ eyes lit up for a moment as she saw a picture of her infant son flash across a television screen.

“My baby,” she said in Portuguese.

It had been more than a day since she last held her only child, one-month-old Bryan Dos Santos Gomes, who was kidnapped Friday afternoon in Fort Myers.

A woman driving a black SUV abducted Bryan and Ramos Dos Santos, 23, at knifepoint about 4:50 p.m. in Fort Myers. The woman in the SUV dropped the mother off in Estero and rode off with Bryan.

“I really need my baby back,” Ramos Dos Santos said through a translator Saturday night. “I’m really hurt.’’

If the woman can’t bring the baby back to her, she can drop him off at the nearest fire station, she said.

Authorities said Saturday they believe the woman who kidnapped Bryan was trying to replace a child of her own. The woman may have been pregnant and lost her baby or she may have had a young child that died recently, said Sgt. Mike Carr of the Fort Myers Police Department.

“It’s our belief that she was looking for a baby,” Carr said. “She was very cunning. She had a baby seat in her car, a diaper bag in her car. She was prepared to do this.”

Authorities are asking anyone who might know of someone who recently lost a baby to be on the lookout. Police are following several leads but haven’t made an arrest.

The suspect is described as 28 to 30 years old with black, straight hair partially in a bun, standing 5 feet 4 inches, and was last seen wearing a black T-shirt. She was light-skinned and spoke Spanish to the victims, police said, and she was asking for directions to Pine Manor, a neighborhood south of Fort Myers. She was driving a black SUV with peeling window tint.

About 25 officers from local, state and national agencies are working to find Bryan, including two agents from the FBI. Several Brazilian women in the community also have offered to travel to Miami and Tampa — possible destinations for the suspect — to hand out fliers, Carr said. There is also an Amber Alert out for Bryan.

“It is very rare for such a young baby to be kidnapped,” Carr said.

It’s maybe happened three or four times in his 28 years with the Fort Myers Police Department, he said. A similar case occurred six or eight months ago in Charlotte County.

Police confirmed that the suspect in that case is still in jail.

For the baby’s father, Jurandir Gomes Costa, who sat on the front porch of his old but well-kept single-wide trailer at Tropical Trailer Park in Fort Myers on Saturday afternoon, the only help he needs right now is in finding his son, he said.

He’s sad, loves his son and just wants to see him again.

Through a translator — Bryan’s parents are both from Brazil and speak Portuguese — Gomes Costa gave this account of what happened Friday afternoon, holding his face in his hands as he described the details:

The baby’s mother, Ramos Dos Santos, was waiting for a bus outside a hospital in Fort Myers with a friend and her child when a woman she had never seen before drove up, desperate for help and asking for directions in Spanish. The woman claimed she had been driving around the area for eight hours looking for her mother’s house.

Ramos Dos Santos and her friend went ahead and got on the bus, but the woman in the car followed the bus until Ramos Dos Santos and her friend arrived at the stop close by the trailer park off Linhart Avenue.

At that point, the suspect came up to Ramos Dos Santos and her friend crying and again asking for assistance. The women got in her car.

“The two ladies tried to be nice,” said neighbor Richard Corra, who later helped Ramos Dos Santos explain her story to the police, because he speaks both English and Portuguese.

Determining what happened to the women and their children was difficult at first, authorities said, because one of the victims spoke Spanish and the mother whose son is still missing spoke Portuguese.

Eduardo De Macedo, a friend who works with Gomes Costa, said soon after the women got in the car the driver started asking for $500 and making threats. She told Ramos Dos Santos that if they were stopped by police, she had to claim they already knew each other. She also said not to tell police she was heading to Tampa, or she would come find Ramos Dos Santos and her family and harm them.

After the women showed the suspect the neighborhood, she drove the two mothers and children back toward where she picked them up. She then forced one mother and child out of the car, and drove off with Ramos Dos Santos and the infant, Bryan.

The suspect eventually forced Ramos Dos Santos out of the car as well, and left her alone near the Villagio housing development off Three Oaks Parkway in Estero. The suspect took off with the child, and told Ramos Dos Santos to wait 10 minutes before making a phone call.

At some point during the two hours Ramos Dos Santos was in the SUV, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials believe that the suspect used the victim’s cell phone to make a call. Detectives believe that she pretended to call her mother, but it was actually a random call that ended up at a local business.

The abducted infant, Bryan, is Ramos Dos Santos’ only child with her boyfriend of two years, Gomes Costa. The couple met in Brazil and they have been together since, though they are not married.

They came to the U.S. separately within the past two years. Gomes Costa is a flooring contractor and the baby’s mother, Ramos Dos Santos, hasn’t worked since her pregnancy.

For neighbors in the Fort Myers trailer park off Linhart Avenue, where the abducted baby spent the first days of his life, the thought that a kidnapping had happened to someone who lives close by was unsettling.

Residents said it is a close-knit community.

“In this trailer park everybody knows everybody,” resident Garland McBride said. “If someone strange comes in here, we know it.”

Saturday afternoon, he sat with neighbors around a picnic table in view of the trailer park’s community playground, with its green slide, tire swing and red see-saw. Many young families live in the trailer park, and strollers and toys dotted the yards in front of many of the homes.

Most weekends, on nice days, the playground would be crawling with children, but Saturday, the playground was empty and McBride’s neighbor Jimmy Hernandez was keeping a close eye on his year-old son, Vincent.

Police went door-to-door in the trailer park Friday night, he said, checking to make sure the children in each home truly belonged to the adults they were staying with.

Across the trailer park, David Estrada also was keeping a close eye on his 9-year-old daughter as she played in a yard.

“My sister said I have to be careful with my daughter,” said Estrada, who was visiting from West Palm Beach on Saturday. “That’s why I’m outside. I have to watch her.”