A baby boy was found dead after being abandoned outside a fire station on a freezing night.
The tragic discovery took place at the North Orleans Street firehouse in Chicago’s North East Side where a newborn boy was found in a duffel bag covered in a blanket of snow on the morning of January 15.
According to the reports, the baby was discovered at around 5 in the morning when firefighters began shoveling the snow outside the station.
It is highly likely that the baby boy froze to death after it was left all alone in the duffel bag when it was just 25°F or -4°C outside.
Following the disturbing discovery, the Chicago PD launched an investigation and a manhunt for the boy’s parents. As of this writing, no suspects have yet been identified or arrested.
While firehouses are known as safe havens for unwanted babies, mothers are required to notify the staff when dropping off their children anonymously.
“If the baby was placed there alive, that baby froze to death. It’s Chicago. It gets cold at night. You can’t leave a baby out to the elements,” Dawn Geras of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation said in an interview with CBS.
Speaking of the Abandoned Infant Protection Act which was signed into effect in Illinois in 2001, Geras added: “It allows the parent to hand over a baby to staff at a hospital, police or fire station. The reason they hand the baby over is so that maybe the baby doesn’t end up frozen to death and not found.”
The law, however, clearly states that infants should not be left unattended and that staff should be notified.
Confirming this was also Chicago Fire Department spokesperson Larry Langford who warned that unwanted babies should be turned over to staff members and not abandoned outside firehouses in a statement to DailyMail.com.
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