CLINTON — The mother at the center of an Amber Alert issued this week out of Clinton won’t face criminal charges in Utah, the Clinton Police Department said Friday night.
Taylor Webb had claimed she was the rightful guardian of her infant child and that they were safe together in California. But the Amber Alert issued two days earlier remained active until Friday evening, when it was canceled.
Clinton police had said earlier in the day that until they could personally verify that Taylor Webb’s child was safe, the alert would remain active.
“Before we can dismiss the Amber Alert we have to be able to verify the child’s safety, where she’s at, and that she’s with the appropriate state-appointed guardian,” said Clinton Police Sgt. Dick Murdock.
The Amber Alert was lifted just before 6:30 p.m. Friday. Later that evening, police said the Davis County Attorney’s Office had declined to file criminal charges after a “careful and thorough investigation.” The district attorney in Stanislaus County, Calif., had also “tentatively” declined to file charges, Clinton police said.
Attorneys for Webb on Friday night praised law enforcement and the Davis County Attorney’s Office “for their diligence and willingness to review the facts and weigh in on the side of justice for Taylor and Audrey.”
“Understandably, this is a severely trying time for Taylor Webb, a loving and caring mother who never posed any danger or adverse risk to her newborn baby,” said attorneys Joseph Weinberger and Robert Powell in a statement. “It is unthinkable to any parent to imagine your first newborn baby being unjustly removed from your care while fighting for your life in the days after a difficult childbirth.”
Police had been looking for Webb, 25, and her 3-week-old daughter, Audrey Westfall, since Wednesday. Investigators said that sometime between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Wednesday, Webb took Audrey from the grandmother’s home. Audrey was reported as missing to police about 5 p.m. that day. An Amber Alert was issued at 10:41 p.m.
Clinton police said the delay in issuing the Amber Alert, and one of the big obstacles they had throughout the investigation, was the time is takes to verify information in other jurisdictions in California, both with police and the courts.
Clinton Police Lt. Shawn Stoker said detectives needed to verify this was not a custody dispute, and that the missing child was in imminent danger, one of the criteria for issuing an Amber Alert.
“After the initial call came, the first several hours were us determining exactly what we were dealing with. Following up on the information, verification of the information to see whether this truly met the criteria of an Amber Alert, whether this was a civil problem, which direction we needed to go. Custodial situations are something that unfortunately we deal with quite commonly. Amber Alerts are not. And so it’s not something that’s taken lightly. We wanted to make sure that we met that criteria,” Stoker said.
On Thursday, Clinton police received a signed declaration from Webb. In it, she stated that she and Audrey’s father, Jeremy Westfall, were “living an Orwellian nightmare.”
Stoker said earlier Friday that police had since spoken with Webb’s attorney. And while he said there was some comfort in knowing that her attorney claimed Audrey was safe, the Amber Alert wouldn’t be canceled until an official could physically see the infant, or the issue of guardianship changed.
“This investigation remains about Audrey. She is the subject of the Amber Alert. She has yet to be located or the safety of her checked by any official entity, first-person in this case,” Stoker said. “The maternal grandmother is recognized as the guardian of the child. That’s a key element in what we are trying to do here. ... The child is not with the guardian.”
But in her declaration, Webb countered that she was Audrey’s legal guardian because the documents filed by the grandmother, she claimed, were invalid.
In the declaration, which also has attachments of court documents, Webb attempted to explain her family’s backstory, starting with how her stepdaughter died of natural causes at age 10. But she said the death prompted an investigation by Stanislaus County Protective Services, which demanded a “safety plan” be enacted at the house.
Around the same time, Webb gave birth to Audrey and then had post-birth complications that required she temporarily be induced into a coma, she said, and during that time her mother, Paula Webb, was given temporary guardianship over Audrey.
“CPS social workers came to the hospital almost immediately after Audrey’s birth and began dictating that I had to separate from Jeremy, claiming he was violent and abusive,” according to her declaration.
Taylor Webb claimed that she was told that she needed to live with her mother in Utah or risk having Audrey placed in foster care.
“I told them explicitly immediately after this meeting that I had issues with my mother about her being overbearing. They just looked at me with a blank stare, did not even ask me any questions about specifics or anything of the sort,” she wrote.
Webb described her mother in her declaration as “manipulative” and an “individual who I want nothing to do with and will seek a restraining order against.”
While she was in a medically induced coma from Nov. 2 to Nov, 14, Webb claimed her mother manipulated others into believing Webb was in an abusive relationship with Westfall, and filed papers in court to receive guardianship of Audrey.
Webb said she traveled to her mother’s apartment in Utah as soon as she got out of the hospital.
“When I got to her home ... she said that she had ‘custody’ of Audrey and she was her ‘guardian.’ She handed me some papers and began literally ‘lording’ over me. I quickly learned that her serving me with papers was invalid; she is the party to the guardianship action,” according to the declaration.
While at her mother’s house, Webb claimed she called police one day to report abuse and that a police report documenting the incident was written, the declaration states.
Stoker confirmed that officers responded to their residence on Nov. 18.
On Nov. 20, Webb said she took Audrey back to California, only learning after she arrived that an Amber Alert had been issued.
“My attorney assured (Clinton police that) I and the baby are well and fine, but to my knowledge the Amber Alert is still up, and now the world is having a feeding frenzy on social media disparaging me, disparaging Jeremy,” the declaration stated. “I was not properly served, and I am therefore still my child’s lawful guardian.
“The bottom line here and now is I am fine, I am perfectly capable of caring for my daughter, I have support from Jeremy and his family financially,” Webb continued in the declaration before asking the court to dismiss her mother’s guardianship.
Clinton police on Friday night said they understood the guardianship order in California to still be in place. Audrey will remain listed in the National Crime Information Center because she is still not with her court-appointed guardian, police said.
In their statement Friday, Webb’s attorneys asked Paula Webb “to end the remaining peril and turmoil for this innocent mom and baby by immediately terminating the guardianship, which we hope was simply a misguided legal maneuver to assist her daughter while she was in a coma.”
“Clearly, the temporary guardianship was only issued by the court due to Taylor being medically incapacitated due to complications after childbirth, and no further need for guardianship exists,” the attorneys said. “In fact, no further interference of any kind is required for this fully competent and capable mother to raise her own newborn baby, as any American parent has a right to do.”
Contributing: Gretel Kauffman