Last spring, three babies were abandoned within just one week’s time; one in a suitcase, one in a duffle bag and one in a park. Two of them passed away. A dad from New York abandoned his daughter in a city subway station, then later claimed he lost her. A mother discarded her newborn baby in frigid February temperatures at a London park.
These heartbreaking stories grab headlines and tug at our heartstrings. What happened near Worcester, Mass., near busy train tracks recently could’ve turned out to be a similar sad story. But thankfully, it didn’t.
Railroad engineer Eric Martell was working the overnight shift July 3 when he spied something completely out of place next to the railroad tracks.
“I saw the little baby wave at me. I saw his little arm, he started sucking his thumb, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a baby in there.'”
Two twin baby boys had been abandoned in their double stroller not far from a trash and recycling facility.
NBC Boston reported that the boys were approximately nine months old and in good health.
“They seemed healthy. They actually had shoes on, they were a little bit chubby, like a baby’s supposed to be. They were left with bottles and one of them even had a little binky; they were in a nice carriage.”
Eric called out to see if the twins’ parents were anywhere nearby, but no one responded. So he called 911 to report the abandoned babies. While waiting for the police, he gently rocked the stroller back and forth to keep them calm, NBC Boston reported.
“One of the little guys looked up to me, gave me the biggest little smile and I was like, ‘It’s going to be alright, buddy. It’s going to be alright, I got you.'”
According to the Worcester Police Department, the babies appeared unharmed and were relinquished to the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.
Carl Wooden informed WCVB that he was with the babies and their mother about an hour before they were discovered alone in the dark at approximately midnight. He claimed to know their mom and said she was “messed up” at the time.
“I’m in shock still. I’m, like, walking around in circles just totally in awe. It’s traumatizing to me that something like this could even happen.”
New York police medic Tim Jaccard had seen too much heartache in his line of work, instances where the wee ones were not as fortunate as the twin boys Eric discovered. One time, he found a brand new baby girl drowned in a toilet at a courthouse. He found a baby girl who had been deliberately suffocated and discarded in a plastic bag. Five weeks later, he found a little boy tossed away in a recycling bin.
Enough was enough, Tim decided. That’s when he wrote the Abandoned Infant Protection Act and two decades later, all 50 states and the District of Columbia were all on board with the effort he proposed to save unwanted babies.
Each state’s safe haven law varies slightly today, but the mission behind each one is to allow parents to anonymously relinquish newborns at hospitals, fire stations, police departments and other designated locations without facing criminal prosecution.
According to the National Safe Haven Alliance, as of February 2018, 4,105 babies had been relinquished in accordance with their state’s safe haven law. Sadly, there still were 1,465 illegal abandonments with 827 of those deceased.
But thankfully, there are people like Eric and Tim out there in this world that are willing to swoop in and save the babies that can’t help themselves.
Watch Eric light up in the video below as he talks about how he saved the twin boys’ lives. If he hadn’t detected the stroller and movement from within, who knows what might have happened to them.
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