WASHINGTON – The woman on the surveillance video arrived at the TucsonInternational Airport as an expectant mother – and walked out without hernewborn baby.
This week, the Tucson Airport Authority released new information about aJan. 14 incident, including a video, revealing chilling new details about awoman who authorities say abandoned a newborn in an airport bathroom around9 p.m. A rental call employee found the boy and a note.
“I just want what is best for him and it is not me. Please. Im sorry,” thenote read.
The baby was found with a torn umbilical cord and responding medics clampedit to prevent any harm, an airport police report said.
Juana Quintana, a custodian, told police she encountered the woman andasked if she was okay after seeing pools of blood on a bathroom floor. Thebaby was naked with its eyes closed, Quintana said, but the woman said thebaby was three months old and left in a hurried manner.
Quintana said she found bloody clothes in the trash can with paper towelson top in an apparent effort to conceal them.
The baby appeared healthy otherwise and was transported to a nearbyhospital, airport spokeswoman Jessie Butler said in summary provided to TheWashington Post. The baby is now in the custody of the Arizona Departmentof Child Safety, she said.
The airport authority also released photos of the scene and the handwrittenletter found with the child.
“Please help me. My mom had no idea she was pregnant. She is unable andunfit to take care of me. Please get me to the authorities so they can finda good home,” the message said, scrawled on notebook paper in the voice ofthe newborn.
The note then switches to what appears to be a plea and apology from themother.
The woman may have acted under the assumption she was protected byregulations designed for new mothers to leave newborns with authoritieswithout penalty. The law, known as the safe-haven law or Baby Moses law,allows newborns to be left at designated areas like hospitals andfirehouses to prevent the deadly practice of stranding unwanted babies. Itapplies in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., though stateshave differing regulations.
In 1999, Texas became the first state to pass a safe-haven law followingreports of 13 abandoned babies in the Houston area in the first 10 monthsof the year, which prompted public outcry and legislative action, accordingto a Nevada state government review of the legal framework. The concept hasroots in a similar series of abandoned babies in Alabama in 1998.
But the airports are not among facilities commonly designated as safehavens. Criminal charges have yet to be determined, the Arizona Daily Starreported, and the woman remains unidentified.
“We would like to know who she is but we’ve exhausted our resources,”Butler told the paper. In a summary of the incident, Butler said theairport police are not actively looking for the woman but will pursue anyleads they receive.
In Arizona, babies must be under 72 hours old and unharmed to be legallyabandoned, the Arizona Safe Baby Haven Foundation says.
The group lists six hospitals in the state where “drawers” are used todiscreetly leave babies behind, though none of them are in Tucson. At oneof the hospitals, Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, a draweris connected to an internal alarm that alerts hospital staff to a droppedbaby, according to a 2014 story by Raising Arizona Kids magazine.
“We hear stories where a baby is abandoned, or a mother who has had a babydoesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know who to turn to. There are a lot ofdifferent things that are probably going through a mother’s mind. There isa lot of fear,” said Kimberly Marshall, a nurse practitioner and co-founderof the Arizona Safe Baby Haven Foundation. – The Washington Post