OMAHA — A Michigan woman drove roughly 12 hours to Omaha so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital under the state’s unique safe-haven law, Nebraska officials said Monday.
The boy from the Detroit area is the second teenager from outside Nebraska and 18th child overall abandoned in the state since the law took effect in July.
There was no sign the boy was in immediate danger before he was abandoned early Monday, but an investigation was continuing, said Todd Landry, who heads the state’s Department of Health and Human Services’ division of children and family services.
Last week, a 14-year-old girl from Iowa was left at an Omaha hospital by her grandparents. Nebraska’s safe-haven law allows anyone, not just a parent, to drop off a child of any age at any state-licensed hospital without fear of prosecution for abandonment.
