Dallas couple says newborn was switched in El Salvador

Tanya Eiserer | WFAA-TV, Dallas

Show Caption Hide Caption Doctor investigated after couple has baby switched A couple from Dallas is in the midst of an international situation after they brought home the wrong baby from El Salvador.

Dallas resident Rich Cushworth and his wife say the baby just doesn't look like them.

"It's not mine and maybe there's another mother suffering the same as I am and perhaps I have her baby," Mercy Casanalles told reporters during a recent emotional Spanish-language TV interview in El Salvador.

Casanalles gave birth in May at an exclusive hospital in her home country of El Salvador. Pictures taken shortly after birth show her cuddling a light-skinned baby they called Jacob.

Casanalles was in and out consciousness for most of the next two days.

"When they brought her baby to her, she told them 'this isn't my baby,'" said Aaron Beishline, a Dallas resident who has known Cushworth since 2012. "And they said, 'Oh yeah, this is your baby.' She said, 'Well, this baby isn't the same color as my baby.'

"(They said), 'Oh, well, babies change color.'''

DNA tests now show they were right to be suspicious -- the child could not be their biological child.

Genetic testing has now been conducted on all of the baby boys that were born in that hospital on the same day as their baby. Those results are expected in a few days. Friends say the couple hopes that will help them find the real baby Jacob.

"We just want them to give us our son back," Cushworth told a Salvadorian TV station. "It's a horrible situation. I have a child and I don't know where he is."

Multiple Salvadorian media outlets cited the country's attorney general Monday in reporting that the baby had been found and would be reunited with his family. The parents said they love the child they have now and hope that they can keep both babies.

Authorities took the doctor, Alejandro Guidos, into custody last week. Authorities there have launched a criminal investigation into allegations Guidos may have been operating a baby trafficking gang.

The couple was in court Monday for the doctor's first hearing.