A 1-day-old newborn was discovered on a Florida family’s doorstep.
According to ABC 7, the infant was left at Althea Brown’s front door, wrapped in a t-shirt with a note. The child was discovered around 10 a.m. on July 20.
Brown says she doesn’t know why the mother chose her door. Nonetheless, they were able to get the child to a hospital in time.
Now police are attempting to track down the mother after the note left with the child suggests that they both might be in danger. Orlando Police Sargeant Eduardo Berna told reporters that he couldn’t go into the specifics of the note.
However, the letter suggested that the mother and the baby were involved in “a serious domestic violence situation”:
“We’re not going to specifically talk about a note being part of this case, but we are looking into all the circumstances with that.”
Berna said the baby appears to be in good health. However, it’s important for new mothers and parents to follow Safe Haven laws if they decide they can no longer care for their child.
Safe Haven laws differ in each state. In Florida, a parent has seven days after the child is born to take him or her to a hospital, an EMS provider, or a fire station with no questions asked.
Authorities say by dropping an infant off at these locations, it gives the baby a better chance at surviving. Berna told reporters that this baby, in particular, was lucky after being found by Brown’s family and neighbors.
As WFTV reports, this is the second baby in just two years to have been abandoned in this particular apartment complex.
And although it is a crime to abandon a child the way this mother did, a spokesperson for the Safe Haven Foundation hopes to help the mother:
“About the only thing we’ll ask her is would she like medical care, are there any extenuating circumstances that we can be of help to her. We don’t capture names, we don’t look at vehicles that perhaps they drove up in. Absolutely nothing is collected from them.”
Another member of Brown’s family, Clive Petgrave, explained to WFTV how they learned a child was placed on their doorstep:
“(My neighbor) said she was in the kitchen, making breakfast and she heard a baby crying. She said to herself there should be no baby on this floor crying like that. And when she opened the door, she saw a baby.
I don’t know why my door. They have one upstairs. They have one downstairs. And they choose this one.”
