A newborn baby girl in Honolulu, Hawaii is currently in stable condition after a bystander rescued her from a dumpster on December 23.
According to Hawaii News Now, the incident occurred around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, December 22, 2023. A good samaritan, who asked not to be identified, explained that he heard a woman screaming and looked out his window to see her giving birth. To his horror, he then saw her place her newborn in a nearby trash bin and walk away. He then rushed out to rescue the baby girl.
“I was able to just grab it out of the top of the trash and it didn’t look like it was really injured or anything,” the rescuer told KHON. “It was crying when I took it out of the dumpster, which is a good sign.”
After emergency responders arrived, they took the baby to Kapiolani Medical Center, where she is reportedly in serious condition.
“It felt like a dream almost, a scary dream, like a nightmare,” he said. “It was very sad, just a very sad moment. That’s definitely scary to think about what would have happened if I wasn’t here.”
“I broke down a little bit and started crying because I didn’t know how someone could just leave their kid like that,” he added.
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He said that he has been told that the infant is doing ok. “The last thing I heard the baby was in stable condition,” he explained. “I’m grateful to God that I was here home when this all happened so that I was able to get the kid in time to save its life. It could have turned out very different if I didn’t hear the screams and I wasn’t home.”
The mother was not immediately located, and a child abandonment case has been opened.
Each state has a safe haven law to curtail infant abandonment cases just like this one. In Hawaii, it is legal for a parent to surrender their infant within the first 3 days after birth to any hospital, fire station, police station, or emergency medical personnel, without fear of prosecution, provided the infant is in an “unharmed condition.”
