Teens Find Newborn in Queens Dumpster

Given how cold it is, this story is amazing: A teen who had been skateboarding with friends in Elmhurst last night heard some crying and found a a newborn baby girl wrapped in a blanket, inside a brown paper bag, at the top of a dumpster. The temperature was below freezing.

Christopher Moncada said his brother Brian found the baby and when they opened the bag, "The baby was facing down. It looked like it was suffocating. I turned it over and its arms started to move...We just helped out the baby, because it's bad to see a baby die, you know." The Post reports that the boys left the infant with their friends and then headed to the 110th Precinct for help.

The 4-pound baby was slightly hypothermic, but she is now in stable condition at Elmhurst Hospital. Doctors think she was a few hours old and had been in dumpster for 30 minutes; they aren't sure if she wold have survived much longer. Medic Giovanni Caballero told the Post, "It's a Christmas miracle. Thank God for these kids walking by at the right time."

NY State does have a safe haven law, where babies may be abandoned at police stations, fire houses, and hospitals - with no questions asked - but there has been some question as to how effective the law is.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on December 18, 2007 8:12 AM

Comments [rss]

RatherBeBiking

those damn skaters are always causing trouble

Barbj8

Catchy tune!

Barbj8

Catchy tune!

slappy

It is bad to see a baby die.

smitty

Yeah, and what 13 year old boy uses the world "horrific". Come on now.

JRod5417

navin- Maybe those boys are in shock and couldn't properly articulate their thoughts in a nicely structured sentence. Just a thought.

rexlic

No offense, even after the "morons" thing, but if the point was teens who stumbled upon a horrific scene and their "blase" reaction, how is it your own was to think of a cartoon, find the relevant scene and post it as YOUR initial reaction? Isn't that, I don't know, a little blase?

rexlic

No offense, even after the "morons" thing, but if the point was teens who stumbled upon a horrific scene and their "blase" reaction, how is it your own was to think of a cartoon, find the relevant scene and post it as YOUR initial reaction? Isn't that, I don't know, a little blase?

chuzzlewit

Welcome Olivia Kickflip Moncada. (We'll call her "Ollie".)

navinjohnson

hey morons – i wasn't commenting on the grammar. i was saying (and i posted this earlier but it seems to have disappeared) that it was tragic the calmness with which these kids talk about the death of a baby.

to casually refer to something as 'bad' (instead of – you know – fucking horrific) is unbelievably sad and makes me wonder what their own lives are like.

navinjohnson

hey morons – i wasn't commenting on the grammar. i was saying (and i posted this earlier but it seems to have disappeared) that it was tragic the "blasé-ness" with which these kids talk about the death of a baby.

to casually refer to something as 'bad' (instead of – you know – fucking horrific) is unbelievably sad and makes me wonder what their own lives are like.

rexlic

Not to pile on, but navinjohnson's takedown of some teenagers for their words after finding and rescuing a newborn infant from a dumpster only came after his more mature and measured reaction: posting a clip from a cartoon.

zodak

you have to be a special kind of idiot to comment on grammar when a baby was left to die in below-freezing temperatures in a trash dumpster & it was saved by a couple of skateboard kids.

if all you can think about when reading that kind of story is proper grammar then you really are a loser. get a life.

bklynd

Yeah, what the kids are saying is just a variant of the much more noble "I just did what anyone would do in that situation." It comes out dumb because, you know, they are kids.