An Australian mother has told a Canadian court the horror she felt when US Marshals arrested her at Los Angeles International Airport for abducting her seven-year-old son.
"I was in shock, I was scared, I was in disbelief," the mother, charged with parental abduction, testified during her trial underway in Brandon, a city in the central Canadian province of Manitoba.
The woman, who has not been identified to protect the identity of her son, met her husband in Australia in the mid 1990s, they married in 2001, had a son and moved to Canada in 2008, according to the Brandon Sun newspaper.
On December 14, 2011, with the marriage crumbling the mother allegedly picked her son up at school, drove south to the US state of North Dakota and flew to Los Angeles for a connecting flight to Australia.
The father testified he contacted authorities when he returned home from work and discovered the house was dark and his wife's jewellery, cash, travel bags and many of his son's clothes were missing.
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Canadian and US authorities were able to track the woman and her son to the LA airport, where they arrested her and placed the boy in a foster home overnight until his father picked him up.
The woman, who testified on Monday she planned to call her husband when she landed in Australia and intended to always return to Canada, was held in jail in LA for more than three months before being extradited back to Canada.
She was released on bail and shares custody of her son with her estranged husband.
"He loves his mom, he loves his dad," the mother testified.
"He's glad he sees us both."
The trial continues on Tuesday.
