After 3 a.m. on July 11, an EMT at a station across the street from the Manhattan doorman told them that he had found a baby boy wrapped in a blanket outside of his building.
People in New York City, including a doorman and a group of EMTs, ran to help a newborn baby who had been left alone outside of an apartment building. They saved his life.
Around 3:15 a.m. on Thursday, July 11, a doorman in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood heard the baby crying from outside the front door of the fancy apartment building he works in on West 23rd Street, according to ABC7, News 12 New York, and CBS News New York. Police said the baby boy, who they did not name, was lying in the street naked and wrapped in a blanket. His umbilical cord was still attached, and he was awake and aware.
NBC New York talked to a guy named Ronald Robertson who said he was sleeping under the nearby High Line. He said he heard the baby crying minutes before and told the doorman about it.
I thought it was impossible. Robertson told the news source, “I thought I was seeing things.” “I wasn’t going to sit there and let a baby die, I have three kids of my own.”
Reporters say the doorman ran across the street and knocked on the window of an ambulance. Inside, two EMTs, Mia Chin and Patrick Feimer, were finishing up their shift at FDNY EMS Station 7.
“It was new. “It was a fresh delivery, so it must have happened just now,” Chin told reporters about the boy’s birth.
A Facebook post from the FDNY says that Chin and her partner jumped into action and ran to help the baby. They then brought him inside the station to get more medical care. The baby was then taken to a nearby hospital by paramedics Jack Kaddah and Dennison Rougier, the department said.
“We just forgot how to train,” Chin told the press during the event, as reported by CBS News New York. “We relied on what the fire department has taught us time and time again, and we immediately brought the infant to our desk lieutenant and waited for medics to transport the child to Bellevue [Hospital].”
“When someone knocks on the window like that, you don’t know what to expect,” Feimer told the news source. “So we just ran over and tried to assess the situation and when we saw [the newborn], that’s when you kind of snap into action.”
“When I approached the infant it was crying and cooing and waving, and I was just so happy that the child was alive, was well, didn’t have any obvious injuries,” Chin said.
Several news sources say that the mother, 37-year-old Ayatta Swann, was found when she checked herself into the same hospital where the baby was taken. News 12 New York and CBS News New York both said that the NYPD charged Swann with abandoning a child.
During the press conference, Laura Kavanagh, the fire commissioner for New York City, said that the state has a safe haven law that lets babies “up to 30 days of age” be left in a safe place, like a hospital or fire station, without giving any more information as long as they tell an “appropriate person,” according to the Office of Children and Family Services.
During the news conference, Kavanagh told CBS News New York, “We are very lucky that that doorman was able to alert them and that they were there so we could step in right away.” “You can bring [newborns] to the station or the firehouse or police precinct and knock on the door and not be asked any additional questions.”
Kavanagh said that the child is doing well and “will live.”
People asked the NYPD for information, but they didn’t answer right away.
