An African-American baby boy, believed to be just hours-old, was found in a container inside a dumpster in Arlington, Texas, prompting police to start an investigation into the motives and the whereabouts of its mother.
The baby was found in a container at a dumpsite near the 2100 block of Tan Oak Lane by a woman who was taking her trash out and heard a baby crying inside the dumpster around 8:15 a.m. on Sept. 21. The woman, whose name is not made public, took the baby out of the trash and notified 911, investigators reported.
“It was pretty scary,” Arlington Police Department Lt. Chris Cook told CBS Local. “When we first get there, our EMS personnel had to do CPR on the child, so this was a really close call.”
The baby was transported to Medical City Arlington hospital and is said to be in stable condition.
“Number one, the container was closed, and it’s hot outside,” Lt. Cook added. “There’s no telling if she wasn’t taking trash out at that moment in time this morning, we could be talking about a totally different scenario right now,” Fox News reported.
The state has a “Safe Haven Law,” or “Baby Moses Law” in place which allows people to hand in a baby up to two months old to authorities, “without questions asked.” This law is meant to avoid these kinds of situations of mothers dumping their unwanted babies. Now, the woman may face abandoning a child or injury to a child charges.
Police urge the woman, or anyone with valuable information to come forward, if only for the medical record of the child, to help find a family member to foster the child instead of taking him to an orphans’ home.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call police at 911 or, if they want to remain anonymous, Crime Stoppers at 817-469-8477.
Newborn Girl Found Alive in Grocery Bag
In a similar incident, a newborn baby girl has been found alive and crying inside a plastic grocery bag in Georgia on June 6, 2019.
In a statement, Forsyth County Sheriff said that at around 10:08 p.m. a crying baby was reported at the 1900 block of Daves Creek Road.
“Shortly after deputies arrived on scene they located a white, newborn, female baby that had been left in a wooded area,” the statement said.
Police said the deputies who found the child gave her first aid. She was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition.
In a press conference on Friday, Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman said that it was “divine intervention” that the baby remained unharmed inside the plastic bag.
“It was obvious that the baby was a newborn. We believe within hours of our discovery that the baby had been born,” Freeman said.
According to ABC News, the sheriff’s office spokeswoman Deputy Jenny Belafi said people are coming forward with proposals for adopting the child.
“Georgia Safe Haven Law allows a mother up to 30 days after the birth of an infant to drop that infant off at a hospital, a fire station, a police station, a sheriff’s station,” said Freeman.
Epoch Times reporter Venus Upadhayaya contributed to this report
