Neighbor of mom accused of kidnapping daughter assumed arresting cops were joking

Wild video shows the moment an unassuming mom was busted for kidnapping her daughter 42 years ago — with a neighbor laughing and joking with the cops, assuming they couldn’t really be arresting her friend.

Debra Newton, 66, was chatting to her pal while walking her dog on Nov. 24 outside her home in Villages when several Marion County Sheriff’s deputies rolled up on them.

The neighbor immediately starts kidding around with them, clearly never expecting them to be about to arrest Newton, whom she knew as Sharon Nearly, the alias the fugitive mom had been using.

“Uh, oh — they’re coming for you, Sharon!” the neighbor jokes loudly.

“They don’t want me!” Newton replies, before turning to ask nervously: “What’s up?”

“We’re here for you, ma’am. definitely here for you,” a lead officer then notes, telling her they have a warrant for her arrest.

Still convinced it’s a skit, the neighbor walks up to her pal, telling her, “They’re teasing you, they have to be teasing.”

“Ma’am, we’re not,” the deputy notes — with the neighbor finally seeming to understand her friend is indeed in trouble.

Newton was wanted for allegedly kidnapping her daughter, Michelle Marie Newton, in 1983 — who had no idea about her past when she was found living in Kentucky under a different name.

The mom allegedly moved her and her daughter from Louisville, Kentucky, to Georgia under the pretense of starting a new job and setting up their new home — but disappeared by the time her husband, Joseph Newton, got there.

It’s not exactly clear when the mother abandoned her daughter, but Michelle, now 46, was raised under a different name and was none the wiser for her whole life.

Her mother, now 66, started going by “Sharon” and started the new life in Florida, authorities said.

Michelle’s father tried to track them down for decades. But Michelle was removed from the nationwide missing child databases in 2005, when she would have been around 25.

The case was reopened in 2016 at the request of a family member, and in 2025, investigators located the long-lost daughter.

Newton, who once held a spot on the FBI’s “Top 8 Most Wanted parental-kidnapping fugitives,” was arrested before police went to Michelle’s doorstep and broke her the life-shattering news.

“You’re not who you think you are. You’re a missing person. You’re Michelle Marie Newton,” they told the daughter.

She reunited with her father for Thanksgiving — and said she holds no ill-will towards her mother.

“I think there’s a lot of healing that’s got to happen between my mom and I, and she has an opportunity to connect with family that’s missed her more than she realizes,” she told ABC News.