An off-duty New York City police officer who is seven months pregnant pulled her 4-year-old son away from a woman who tried to take him outside a McDonald’s in Crown Heights, authorities and the boy’s family said.

Anyia James Roberts was across the street with her husband on Sept. 14 when her mother called in a panic. A stranger was trying to take the boy, J’Marke Roberts, outside the restaurant on Eastern Parkway near Utica Avenue.

Roberts ran to the scene and found her 66-year-old mother struggling to hold onto her grandson as another woman pulled him the other way. The woman allegedly insisted the child was hers and would not let go even after he began to cry. Relatives said she grabbed the boy by his shirt and repeated that he was her son.

Roberts pulled her son free. Her husband, Gentle Roberts, confronted the woman, who then fled without the child. The boy was not physically injured but was badly shaken.

“His mom pulled him away from her,” Gentle Roberts said. “She’s a strong woman. She’s back at work today.”

Police later arrested Chrissy Payne, 47, of Brooklyn. She was taken into custody on the night of Sept. 18 and charged with attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child. A Brooklyn judge ordered her held on $50,000 cash bail or a $100,000 bond.

Prosecutors said Payne also faces separate felony hate-crime assault charges from an alleged attack on a woman aboard a city bus in August and has other open cases dating back to April.

Source: New York Post reporting, September 2026.