Security cameras behind a store in New Mexico caught the horrific act of a teen girl tossing her unwanted baby into a dumpster and passersby rescuing the same newborn hours later!
“I got a call about 8:30 on [Friday, Jan.7], and Hobbs PD said, ‘Hey Joe, are your cameras working out back?'” Joe Imbriale, the owner of Rig Outfitters, told local news outlets. “They said we have a crime scene.”
At first, Imbriale thought the police had meant that someone had broken into his store. But the video showed a woman pulling up in a white car around 2 p.m. MT and unceremoniously tossing a black bag from the backseat into the dumpster and driving off.
Close to six hours later, the cameras show a group of people fishing through the dumpster and pulling a baby out! They had heard the baby crying from inside the dumpster, Imbriale said.
Acting Hobbs Police Chief August Fons said during a news briefing that the three people were scavenging in the dumpsters “for anything of value” when they heard whimpering inside. They dug closer and eventually found the male newborn inside a trash bag.
They picked him out, wrapped in a “dirty, wet towel” covered in dried blood and with his umbilical cord still attached, the chief said.
Police identified the good Samaritans as Michael Green, Hector Jasso, and April Nuttall.
Jasso told police that they first thought the crying might have been a kitten, but as soon as he picked up the bag, he could tell it was too heavy. Nuttall fished the child out of the bag and immediately cradled him in the towel, according to video of the incident and the police report. Green called 911.
“Their collective quick response to this emergency, including notification of 911, was absolutely pivotal in saving this baby’s life,” Fons said.
Police arrived within minutes.
A short while later, investigators called Imbriale and asked if they could review his surveillance cameras.
“They said we’re looking for somebody that dumped a black garbage bag in your dumpster, and I knew right then, I turned to the office and said, ‘Please don’t tell me it’s a baby,’” he said.
The room got emotional, he said, but one of the officers interjected: “The baby’s still alive. Don’t worry.”
After reviewing the video, Hobbs police charged the mother, 18-year-old Alexis Avila, with attempted murder and child abuse. They said she confessed to investigators. Fons said investigators would not release the suspected father’s identity because he is a juvenile.
Fons said Avila told investigators that she did not know she was pregnant until last week when she sought treatment for abdominal pain. She also told police she ended her relationship with the suspected father back in August.
Avila’s mother, Martha Avila, told detectives that she’d banned the ex-boyfriend from their home in June after he allegedly “battered” her daughter.
Avila told police she gave birth to the boy in her parents’ bathroom and panicked. She allegedly stuffed the baby inside two plastic bags, one with other trash, and left it in the dumpster.
Temperatures that night hovered around 36 degrees, according to police, and the “wind was blowing moderately.”
During her interview with investigators, police said, “Alexis referred to the baby as ‘it’ at all times.” When detectives asked what she thought would happen to a baby left in a plastic bag, she didn’t answer, according to the criminal complaint obtained by Fox News.
An ambulance brought the baby to a nearby hospital. The child later traveled by helicopter to another one in Lubbock, Texas, where he is in stable condition. Fons declined to release additional details about the child.
Infant abandonment such as this is a growing problem in the country. Instead of leaving unwanted children to possibly die abandoned in dumpsters or public restrooms, desperate mothers of unwanted children are reminded to make use of so-called “safe haven laws.” The Abandoned Infant Newborn Protection Act requires that every fire station in all 50 states must accept a relinquished newborn infant in accordance with the law. After the relinquishment of a newborn infant, fire station personnel must arrange for the transportation of the infant to the nearest hospital.
