BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - A North Carolina woman who raised a child kidnapped from a New York hospital two decades ago is in custody on a parole violation charge, the FBI said Sunday.

Ann Pettway surrendered Sunday morning to the FBI and Bridgeport police on a warrant from North Carolina, FBI supervisory special agent William Reiner said. She was on probation because of a conviction for attempted embezzlement and wasn't allowed to leave the state. She's in custody and couldn't be reached for comment.

North Carolina officials said Friday that Pettway had violated her probation and was believed to be on the run from authorities.

Correction officials tried repeatedly to contact Pettway after finding out investigators wanted to question her in the 1987 abduction of the infant, who's now grown and was recently reunited with her long-lost family. Pettway is on probation because of a conviction for attempted embezzlement and is not allowed to leave North Carolina.

Nobody answered when a reporter on Friday knocked on the door of a house where Pettway lived in Raleigh, N.C.

The abducted child, Carlina White, had long suspected Pettway wasn't her biological mother because she could never provide her with a birth certificate. No suspects were ever identified in White's 1987 disappearance from Harlem Hospital in New York. White is now 23 years old and has been living under the name Nejdra Nance in Connecticut.

She recently reunited with her biological family, which believes Pettway was the kidnapper.

Her parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, said a woman who looked like a nurse had comforted them at the hospital. The girl was just 19 days old and had been admitted in the middle of the night with a high fever. Her parents left the hospital to rest and found she was missing when they came back.

Nance told the New York Post in an interview posted Thursday that reuniting with her family was like a dream.

"I'm so happy," she said. "At the same time, it's a funny feeling because everything's brand new. It's like being born again."

Authorities are considering whether federal investigators should take the case because the statute of limitations may have expired in New York, New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne said. There is no limitation in federal missing-children cases.

A woman who lives near Pettway in North Carolina, Sonova Smith, said Pettway mentioned that she had a daughter in Connecticut but had moved to Raleigh with her son. Smith and Pettway both had teenage sons who would often play together, and Smith said her neighbour seemed to be a good mother.

"She was friendly. She was kind. She loved her son," Smith said. "We talked about our boys often. She talked about family. So, it's just really been surprising."