ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A New York woman who escaped police custody at a Pennsylvania hospital while pregnant has pleaded guilty to kidnapping a woman and her infant at knifepoint last year.
Thirty-six-year-old Billie Jo Ribble of Bath in Steuben (stoo-BEHN') County pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Rochester. She faces at least 20 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for June 25.
Ribble was arrested last March in Mansfield, Pa., on charges stemming from a 2012 burglary near her hometown. Ribble, who told police she was seven months pregnant, was taken to the hospital in Wellsboro, Pa., after complaining of stomach pains.
Police say Ribble assaulted her hospital guard, then jumped out a third-story window to a second-story rooftop and climbed down. She kidnapped a Wellsboro woman and her 6-month-old baby at knifepoint and made the woman drive her to New York, where she was captured in Corning.
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