The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia has released body cam footage of the dramatic rescue of a newborn baby girl in hopes of identifying her. Police were called to a roadside in the rural Georgia county after local residents heard the baby crying.
When police arrived, they found the baby, with an umbilical cord still attached to her body, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. Authorities estimated the baby had been born just hours before she was found. She has been named “India,” for the time being and, according to a statement by Sheriff Ron Freeman, she was found in remarkably good condition.
India has been in the care of the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, and is “thriving” according to a statement from the sheriff’s department, with one officer calling her a “sweetheart.”
The state of Georgia has a safe haven law that permits a mother to surrender a newborn to a hospital, fire station, or police department without facing charges of neglect or abandonment.
Sheriff Freeman remarked shortly after finding India, “We want to understand and find out how this baby was abandoned … Thirty-two years, this is the first one I’ve had of an abandoned child in this manner.”
