NJ.com report on a sad case of a premature baby found
abandoned and left to die in the garbage disposal area behind an apartment
building in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The baby, according to the report, was rushed to the Jersey City medical centre and is reported
to be in a stable condition and gaining weight.
The NJ.com report reads as follows,
A new born baby is lucky to be alive after it was abandoned and left inside a garbage bag dumped behind a Jersey City apartment building, officials said.Police were dispatched to a 5-story apartment building on Kensington Avenue around 3 p.m. to a report of an abandoned baby boy who was found in a garbage container, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Gene Rubino said.The baby was rushed to be treated at the Jersey City Medical Center, said Rubino, adding that its condition at this time is unknown.No additional information was release as officials with the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit and Jersey City Police are continuing their investigation.The building supervisor, Arturo Rivas, who called the police said he was told of the find by three teenage boys who were playing in the building’s courtyard and heard the baby crying.Rivas’s wife, Rebecca Womers, said she rushed to retrieve the child after the teenage boys ran up to their apartment and said “We hear something crying, we see something moving.”“I opened the bag from the bottom and it still had the umbilical cord attached,” she said.Womers said she cleaned the baby and noticed its chest was moving as she waited for Emergency Medical Service personnel to arrive on the scene.She said no one in the apartment building that she knows of was pregnant and said she has no idea who could have left the baby in the trash.Rivas said he usually kicks the teenage boys out of the courtyard but today he said “thank God they were back there.”
This is a particularly sad case since New Jersey is one of
the States that actually has a safe haven law known as the ‘Safe Haven Infant
Protection Act’, which allows for anonymous Drop-Off For Unwanted Infants.
The Safe Haven Infant
Protection Act allows an individual to give up an unwanted infant safely,
legally and anonymously. The parents — or someone acting on their behalf — can
bring a baby less than 30 days old to any hospital emergency room or police
station. The Division of Child Protection and Permanency will take the child
into custody and place the infant in a foster or pre-adoptive home
