Shocking footage captured the moment a 14-year-old girl walked into a Mexican restaurant, handed a customer a newborn baby girl with part ...
Shocking footage captured the moment a 14-year-old girl walked into a Mexican restaurant, handed a customer a newborn baby girl with part of the umbilical cord still attached and then fled.
According to Jersey City officials, the girl entered the El Patron restaurant on Wednesday around 4 pm holding a newborn baby. She claimed she had found the infant and asked staff for help.
'She kind of looked a little bit desperate,' Frankie Augilar, who was working in the front of the restaurant at the time, told NJ.com.
The 14-year-old was seen on surveillance camera footage obtained by ABC 7 entering the El Patron restaurant in Jersey City on Wednesday and asking for help
She then handed the infant to a customer who was enjoying a late lunch before she fled the scene. The customer, Alease Scott, had asked to check the baby's vitals
A customer who was eating a late lunch with her boyfriend then asked the teenager if she could check the baby's vitals, at which point the girl, whom authorities have not named as she is a minor, handed her the baby girl.
'My focus went straight to the baby,' Alease Scott recounted to ABC 7.
She said she could tell the baby was having trouble breathing, but almost immediately after the teenager handed her the child, she fled the establishment.
Police responded a short time later, and provided the infant with medical support.
Fortunately, Scott was trained in CPR.
'Once I applied the oxygen mask to the baby, all of a sudden we heard the most beautiful cry, and the baby started moving,' Scott said.
Scott said her attention immediately turned to the infant she was holding
She said she was glad she was there, and would be willing to be the baby's godmother
'She slightly opened up her eyes and then she closed her eyes, but the sweetest thing was when she got hungry, and she was trying to suckle on the oxygen mask,' Scott told ABC 7, 'So we knew she was OK.'
The infant, who still had a piece of the umbilical cord attached to her, was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, and police found the teenager — who initially denied being the baby's mother — not far from the restaurant.
She is not facing charges at this point, Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said, and was also taken to the local Medical Center.
Police arrived on the scene a short time later with medical equipment and oxygen
The whole ordeal took place at the El Patron restaurant in Jersey City, a short distance from where the teenager was later found
Both she and the baby are in good health, Jersey City officials said on Thursday.
The infant will now be put up for adoption, and Scott and her boyfriend, Walter Cocca, said they would be willing to be the baby's godparents.
'I'm just so happy I was there to help because she was desperate and didn't know what to do,' Scott said. 'She was just so young.'
New Jersey has a Safe Haven Infant Protection law, which allows an individual to leave an unwanted baby less than 30 days old with staff at any hospital emergency room, police station, fire station, ambulance, first aid or rescue squad.
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