There are lots of things you may find in a grocery store parking lot. A smashed carton of eggs, Girl Scouts selling cookies, a child throwing a tantrum while their exhausted parent tries to calm them down.
But you’d never expect to find an abandoned newborn baby.
Especially, not one wrapped in a blanket and left in a shopping cart inside of a Jonas Brothers backpack in 103-degree weather. Unfortunately, that’s what one shopper came across around 7:45 p.m. at a Food City in Tempe, AZ.
That shopper immediately notified a store manager who called 911 straight away.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” the manager said in the 911 call.
The poor child can be heard screaming in the background of the 911 call.
“The [umbilical] cord was cut, but it’s still attached,” the manager said. “This is so sad.”
The fire department directed the store manager to make sure that the baby was warm and to make her cry and said to flick the baby’s feet in order to make her cry so they could tell if the baby was breathing or not and was getting enough oxygen.
You can listen to the 911 call below.
The baby, who the manager said was “beautiful,” is believed to have been born that day. The child was taken to the hospital after emergency responders arrived.
The child, thankfully, was found to be in good health.
Police have been trying to track down the parents of the 7-pound child and asked the public for their help in identifying the baby or offering any information about her.
` “We know the baby was abandoned but to every action, there is a story behind it,” Det. Lily Duran told azfamily.com. “We want to know that [story] because we don’t know the circumstances behind this.”
Arizona law permits parents to surrender their unharmed newborns within 72 hours of birth to a Safe Haven, such as a fire department or hospital, without facing any criminal charges.
However, the abandoned baby was left just steps from Tempe’s Fire Station 1.
Please contact Tempe Police with any information. 480-350-8311 pic.twitter.com/U8qkriwq0t
— Tempe Police (@TempePolice) June 5, 2017
“There’s a certain amount of frustration that all they had to do was walk 50 feet away to the fire station, give us the child, no questions asked,” Assistant Chief for the Tempe Fire Medical Rescue Department Paul Nies said. “We’d have taken care of that baby.”
Those with any information about this child can contact (480) 350-8311.
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