Ann Pettway may have snatched little Carlina White in a desperate attempt to hold onto her drug-dealer boyfriend after she had lost his baby, a cousin said yesterday.
The cousin, Brian Pettway, told The Post that Ann was pregnant in the summer of 1987 but one day mysteriously dropped out of sight.
“She was pregnant. She disappeared for two months. When she got back, she had [an infant]. We all assumed that she had the baby while she was away. No one questioned it,” said Brian Pettway, 38.
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Ann Pettway — part of an extended family notorious in the greater Bridgeport area for both its size and its extensive criminal history — was dating a known pusher, Brian Pettway said.
“At the time, she was dating a big-time drug dealer, which, back then, it was a status thing to date someone like that in this neighborhood. What I think happened was, she lost her child and got [White] as a means of holding onto this guy,” he said.
Ann Pettway is accused of snatching White from Harlem Hospital 23 years ago and raising her as her own daughter.
Ann’s mother, Mary, also has said Ann had been pregnant around that time.
“She was pregnant in 1987,” Mary Pettway said. “I wasn’t with her when she gave birth. [White] was Ann’s daughter until all this came up. I don’t know right now what to think.”
Bridgeport police sources said trouble is nothing new for the Pettway family.
A database search of Connecticut Superior Court records shows more than 320 criminal cases involving at least 78 different individuals from the Bridgeport area with the surname Pettway since the late 1980s.
“I arrested a number of them in my career. Very intimidating,” a Bridgeport police lieutenant said yesterday.
A retired Bridgeport police sergeant who had also arrested members of the family said a number of Pettways were involved in the drug trade on the city’s tough East End and East Side dating to the ’80s.
“They were everywhere, and they ran the crack and coke trade on Stratford Avenue in the ’80s and the ’90s,” he said, referring to a strip notorious for drugs and crime.
The lieutenant said many family members were legitimate businesspeople and law-abiding citizens.
Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan and Reuven Fenton