A St. Louis father was arrested after a video allegedly showed him dragging a newborn baby face down in a stroller. Tamadji Shakespeare, 27, was reportedly walking downtown on Olive Street on September 9, when the incident occurred.
Steward Stiles, a teacher at Voices Academy Charter School, apparently saw the father pulling the stroller. When the man walked away, leaving the stroller behind, Stiles jumped in to help. Stiles told KMOX he was in the right place at the right time.
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At first, Stiles thought the infant was a toy.
Concerned, he walked over to the stroller after Shakespeare left, unsure what he would find. He thought it might have been a toy in the stroller.
"As soon as he dropped the stroller I immediately ran to the stroller, picked up the child, picked up the stroller, called police," Stiles told KMOX. "I looked in the stroller and there was a child in there. I thought it was maybe a toy but when the baby started moving I was like, 'Oh my god this is a real child.'"
Miraculously, the infant was unharmed.
According to Stiles, the baby seemed to be OK and didn't seem disturbed by the precarious situation. She appeared to be properly secured inside the stroller.
"The child had no scrapes or bruises, miraculously, because the child was barely hanging above the ground," Stiles explained.
Stiles added he thought the baby was very young. "This was definitely a newborn baby. I wouldn't say no more than two months old. You still had to support the head," he said.
Shakespeare was arrested a short time later.
Stiles told KMOX the father walked down to Tucker Boulevard before returning to Olive Street, where he allegedly abandoned the baby. He was arrested not long afterward.
According to online records, Shakespeare is housed in the St. Louis City Justice Center on a charge of endangering the welfare of a minor. His next court date is scheduled for September 17.
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It appears the baby is OK.
The child's mother, Adell Cunningham, posted on Facebook that her baby girl, Erha, is OK, and she tagged a few friends.
"Like stop inbox me yes my baby is good man if u not them 4 lady's I won't be answering you like im going through enough right now so I don't need all of this other stress thank you and God bless you all," she wrote on Facebook.
