Early Saturday morning, a newborn baby girl was discovered abandoned on a hill outside a trailer park in Florida. The infant was just one hour old and still had her umbilical cord and placenta intact.
At a press conference on Sunday, Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County revealed that deputies had been dispatched to the Mulberry area at around 1:45 a.m. after a couple reported finding a newborn baby wrapped in a set of used blankets on a hill near the Regal Loop Mobile Home Park.
Judd reported that the baby was probably born around one to one and a half hours before when the neighbor heard the sound of a baby crying, which she initially believed to be cats fighting.
The temperature was in the 50s when the incident occurred, and the sheriff declared that the baby would have passed away if it wasn’t for the crying that alerted Ordonez and her family, whom Judd praised as “true heroes.”
First responders reported that the baby was full-term and weighed 6.5 lbs. Sheriff Grady Judd mentioned that the infant was in good condition. However, she had some insect bites from being exposed to the outdoors.
He also stated that he named her Angel Grace LNU, “She’s as beautiful as an angel, it’s by the grace of God she’s not dead, and LNU is ‘last name unknown.'”
“It was by the grace of God that we found the abandoned baby girl when we did, before the cold or any animals caused her any harm. She was left in an extremely vulnerable condition, but she’s a strong little girl, and it looks like she’s doing great.” Judd said.
The newborn was then given to the Department of Children and Families for custody.
Authorities surmise that the baby was of Hispanic origin, and her mother is likely a young adult with links to the area. Deputies used a K-9 unit, a drone, and a bloodhound to locate the mother but were unsuccessful. DNA samples were collected from the infant to look for her family.
The sheriff mentioned that the mother would be held responsible for her actions “because she left this child in the woods, ostensibly to die.”
Florida has a haven law that allows parents to take their newborns to a fire station or medical facility up to a week after the birth.
Sheriff Grady Judd stated, “You can literally walk up, hand that baby to a firefighter, and drive off, and never disclose who you are, and there’s no criminal liability to that.”