A newborn baby girl was found abandoned alive in a plastic bag on the side of a roadway in Seymour, Indiana, local police said.
According to a release from the Seymour Police Department, obtained by the local newspaper The Tribune, the hours-old child was found along a fence line on South Jackson Park Drive by someone who was walking a dog on Tuesday afternoon.
The baby was still alive when police officers were called to the scene. She was taken to a hospital and was determined to be healthy by the next day.
The police also reminded the community that the town’s fire station has a Safe Haven Baby Box, which is equipped with a heating and cooling system, as well as motion sensors that trigger a 911 call when there is movement inside, allowing medical personnel to pick up the baby as soon as possible.
“When we installed the first Safe Haven Baby Box in Indiana in 2016 we were averaging two babies illegally abandoned every year. In 2019 so far we’ve had seven Safe Haven surrenders where women surrendered their newborns safely and legally. But I am sad to announce that this is our first abandonment in almost four years in Indiana,” Safe Haven Baby Boxes said in a Facebook post.
Under Indiana’s Safe Haven Law, a person can give up an infant less than 30 days old at designated sites anonymously without fear of arrest or prosecution. As long as there are no signs of intentional abuse of the baby, no information is required from the person leaving the baby.
Beginning in Texas with the Baby Moses law in 1999, all 50 states to this day have enacted their own infant safe haven laws, according to the U.S. Children’s Bureau. These laws aim to save the lives of newborn children who may be at risk for abandonment in unsafe locations, such as trash cans or public restrooms.
The police said no arrest has been made at this time, and the incident is still under investigation.
Young Mother Surrenders Newborn Baby at Los Angeles Fire Station
Earlier this month, a 21-year-old woman surrendered her 2-hour-old girl at a fire station in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, fire department officials said.
The young mother brought the newborn child to Fire Station 13 in Koreatown at around 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 8, according to a Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) alert.
LAFD spokesman David Ortiz told KTLA that the woman came up to the door and banged on it. Someone who heard the noise opened the door to find that she was with a baby girl born approximately two hours earlier. Firefighters took custody of the baby, and performed a patient assessment to determine that she was in good health, before transferring her to a hospital.
Ortiz told the news outlet that the infant will be placed in the custody of child protective services, and possibly be put up for adoption.
The child’s mother, who didn’t want to be identified, left the fire station after the drop-off.
“We are so grateful the young woman made the choice to use our station as a Safe Surrender location and ensure the health and well being of the child,” LAFD officials wrote in a Facebook post. “Please know, you never need to abandon a newborn child.”
