Wrapped in a brown towel, with the wet black hair still attached to the skull, and with the umbilical cord: this is how the baby was found abandoned by a teenage mother in a Latino restaurant in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The mother of the newborn was captured by the cameras of
El Patron
on Wednesday afternoon.
The young woman arrived asking for help: she was looking for the telephone number of the firefighters.
The mother is a teenager: she was only 14 years old, as confirmed by the police.
The baby appeared to be only one hour old.
"I found this child on the street,"
said the minor to the owner of the premises, Silvino Aguilar, as he himself told Noticias Telemundo.
"I do not want it.
I have to go, ”he
added before leaving the premises, located at the corner of Kennedy Boulevard and Linden Avenue.
A teenage girl abandons her newborn baby in a restaurant.
This is how the owners reacted
May 21, 202102: 10
"She seemed a bit desperate
," Aguilar told
The Jersey Journal.
The video shows how a customer, who has resuscitation training, comes over to help her and takes the creature to her table.
"The baby was breathing very weakly"
and needed oxygen, said the woman who helped the baby, Alease Scott.
"They put oxygen on her and that's when she started crying," said Hilda Hernández, the owner of the restaurant.
"I knew it was the mother because she was bleeding," he
added.
When the police arrived to assist the baby, after being alerted by the local staff, the mother had already left.
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"He walked away but he couldn't walk fast because he had blood on his legs and pants," said the owner of the restaurant.
A few steps away,
police detained the teenager and took her to Jersey City Medical Center
.
The minor is doing well and will not face charges even though the restaurant is not one of the places to drop off a baby under the state's Child Protection Law.
The newborn is stable in the same hospital and the New Jersey Department of Children and Family will place her in foster care until she is adopted.
A law to protect abandoned babies
The Safe Haven Child Protection Act allows a person to deliver an unwanted baby
safely, legally, and anonymously
.
Parents - or someone acting on their behalf - can leave an
unharmed baby less than 30 days
old to staff in
any hospital emergency room, police station, fire station,
ambulance, first aid or rescue squad .
As long as the baby shows no signs of intentional abuse, no name or other information is required of the person delivering the baby.
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As in the case of this baby, the New Jersey Department of Children and Families is in charge of placing the child in a foster or pre-adoptive home.
The legislation came after years of similar cases of abandonment of babies to young parents.
In 1998, the Mobile, Alabama district attorney came up with the idea of creating a "safe haven" for unwanted babies.
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The pilot program turned out to be a success: five babies were taken to hospital emergency rooms.
On September 1, 1999,
Texas became the first state to pass a law that allowed parents to surrender a baby anonymously.
Louisiana, Alabama and Minnesota established laws in early 2000.
New Jersey was the fifth state
to pass Safe Haven legislation in August 2000. The movement continued to grow and today all states have a Safe Haven law.
As of April 2020, 76 newborns have been delivered under Safe Haven in New Jersey.
With information from Telemundo 47 and The Jersey Journal.
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