Police in San Antonio, Texas, are imploring the community for help identifying a couple who allegedly abandoned a newborn baby boy outside of a church in the city. The suspects left the baby in a basket outside Grissom Road Church of Christ and fled the area on foot. The baby appeared to be just a day old.
Video surveillance caught the male and female suspects during the incident on July 17 around 1 a.m. A person riding their bicycle in the church parking lot found the abandoned baby around 8 p.m., nearly 20 hours later. Now, police want to find the couple who left the helpless baby alone and find out why.
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It was a hot day in Texas.
According to KENS 5, the high temperature in San Antonio was 110 Fahrenheit that day. The outlet reported that the boy was covered in a jacket inside the basket, which was underneath an awning near the back door. The conditions could have been deadly.
"What a miracle," Pamela Allen, the founder and CEO of Eagle's Flight Advocacy told KENS 5. "What I believe is truly remarkable is that the baby's umbilical cord; which has all the nutrients that the baby needs to survive, was still attached. In my opinion, that's what kept this baby alive."
The area where the couple abandoned the infant is plagued with child abuse.
Allen said the Bexar County area of San Antonio has the highest child abuse rate in Texas. Her nonprofit organization buried five abandoned infants throughout the past decade. Texas has a Safe Haven Law, also known as the Baby Moses Law, which protects individuals who safely abandon their babies under certain circumstances.
The law is in place to help parents who may be unable to care for their unharmed infant without fear of prosecution.
The Texas Department of Family Services outlined specifics for the Safe Haven Law. The baby must be 60 days old or younger and unharmed. The infant can be dropped off at any hospital, fire station, or emergency medical services (EMS) station in Texas, but someone must give the infant directly to a staff member. The person surrendering the baby must provide a medical record if requested by an employee.
"If you leave your baby at a fire or EMS station, your baby may be taken to a hospital to receive any medical attention they need. Remember, if you leave your unharmed infant at a Safe Haven, you will not be prosecuted for abandonment or neglect," the DFS website explains.
The law in Texas is expanding on September 1.
Allen told KENS 5 she was excited to see changes in the law next month. According to Allen, beginning in September, parents can abandon their infants anonymously.
"San Antonio fire stations will soon be installing baby boxes. They are temperature controlled, they will have a camera, they will have an alarm. The boxes save these parents from being so intimidated by law enforcement. Anybody who wears a badge, of course, [can be] intimidating," she explained.
The Baby Moses law is responsible for saving the lives of 20 infants in the San Antonio region since 2009, KENS 5 reported. Nearly 200 children have been saved in Texas since the law was passed.
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Safe Haven Baby Boxes have saved 23 lives since 2016.
Monica Kelsey founded Safe Haven Baby Boxes after learning she was abandoned at a hospital as baby by her teenage mother. Thankfully, she survived, but not all abandoned infants are so lucky. The Safe Haven Baby Boxes quickly alert staff that an infant is inside and needs help.
In January, a Safe Haven Baby Box at a fire station in Ocala, Florida, was the site of the first baby to be left in that type of box in the state. Kelsey explained to Fox 13 how the boxes work.
According to Kelsey, "the drawer opens from the outside, and the newborn is placed in a bassinet," she told the outlet. "The box has heating and cooling elements and is electronically monitored. Silent alarms activate once a baby is placed inside, and the box calls 911 on its own to notify first responders."
Anyone with information about the abandoned baby case in San Antonio is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at (210) 224-STOP (210-224-7867) or visit their website.
