IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) — A Brigham Young University-Idaho student has been charged with kidnapping a four-week-old infant after allegedly taking a shopping cart containing the baby from a Costco store last month.
Michael Garrison Raine, 24, faces one count of second-degree kidnapping. The arrest followed an investigation prompted by a mother’s quick response after she discovered her child was missing from her shopping cart.
According to court documents, the alarming incident took place on Thursday, November 20, while a local mother was shopping with her four-week-old daughter, who was secured in a car seat placed in the main basket of the shopping cart.
The mother told police she was in the book section, with her cart within arm’s reach, when she noticed a man lingering nearby. As she began reading the back of a book, she said she had a “weird feeling,” and when she looked up, the cart and her baby were completely gone.
She immediately searched for her daughter and found her a few aisles over in the snack section. There, she spotted the same man pushing the cart away from her. The mother quickly grabbed the cart back. The man, later identified as Raine, immediately began apologizing repeatedly, saying, “I’ll never do that again, I promise.”
Surveillance Video and Conflicting Accounts
Investigators later obtained Costco security video, which reportedly captured Raine taking the cart and the following confrontation with the mother. The video also showed Raine using a self-checkout under the membership of fellow BYU-I student Benjamin Jensen, before eating at the food court.
Detectives eventually identified Raine as Jensen’s roommate through his BYU-Idaho and Facebook profiles, which matched the surveillance footage and the mother’s description.
Raine was ultimately detained on November 26 at a Marine Corps Recruiting station in Idaho Falls, where he had been speaking with a military recruiter. Court documents reveal that Raine had visited the same Recruiting Station earlier that week but failed out of the Military Entrance Processing Station due to psychological reasons.
When brought in for questioning, Raine initially denied that anything unusual had happened, only acknowledging that he had visited Costco that day. When confronted with the fact that a child was taken that day, he appeared surprised. According to court docs, when investigators clarified that he had been the individual who took the child, Raine responded, “Oh! That! I’m so sorry. I remember that now.”
Raine claimed he was “completely mistaken” and had “grabbed the wrong cart.” He told the arresting officer he apologized to the mother, but that she simply walked away, and he then grabbed his own cart and went to checkout. When officers showed him the surveillance video, Raine responded, “I was just so oblivious.”
Raine ultimately denied taking the child on purpose, stating it was an accident. However, the arresting officer noted in court documents that the video evidence “does not appear to support this claim.”
After downloading his phone with written consent to search it, Raine was transported to the Bonneville County Jail and booked on the kidnapping charge. He is set to appear in court next week, on December 10th, at 1:00 PM for a preliminary hearing before Judge Tawnya Rawlings.
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