AURORA — An apparently destitute mother who gave her newborn child to a couple at a bus stop at East Colfax Avenue and North Yosemite Street in Aurora is being sought by authorities.
A couple driving by spotted the woman in bloody clothing and holding a white sheet early on Friday, according to Aurora police.
The couple stopped and asked the woman if she needed help. Her speech was incoherent, but she handed them the sheet. In the sheet was the newborn, a little boy.
The couple — who are not from the Denver area — asked the woman if she needed to go to the hospital, but she didn’t respond coherently.
The couple took the baby and drove straight to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital on the Fitzsimons campus.
“The baby landed in good hands and in the hands of a responsible couple who took him to the hospital,” Detective Shannon Lucy said at a news conference this morning. “A lot of people would drive by and do nothing. To ask about the baby’s welfare and take the child to the hospital is pretty phenomenal.”
Doctors said the infant had been born only a couple hours before his mother gave him to the couple and may have been a few weeks premature.
The child is well and in the custody of Adams County Department of Human Services.
“The baby is stable and at Children’s Hospital where he is getting the best treatment you can get around here,” said Darwin Cox, a human services spokesman.
Cox declined further comment on the child or the incident.
Lucy said that investigators have been unable to establish the identity of either the mother or the baby boy.
The mother is described as a black female about 40 years of age, 5 feet 3 inches tall, and weighing 105 to 120 pounds.
She was wearing a dark-colored scarf that hid her hair. She is missing some of her top teeth on the right front side and had burn marks or scars on her bottom lip.
Authorities are trying to find the mother so they can have a more complete medical history of the boy, which could help him as he goes through life, Lucy said.
Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Del Matticks at 303-739-6367 or Sgt. Joe Young at 303-739-6382.
The Colorado legislature passed a safe-haven law in 2000 so that a baby 72 hours old or younger can be given to a firefighter or a hospital staff member anonymously with no criminal charges.
Since June of 2000, more than two dozen babies have been dropped off at safe havens around the state. Annual numbers, according to the Colorado Department of Human Services, in Colorado are: 2000 — 0; 2001 — 1; 2002 — 5; 2003 — 3; 2004 — 4; 2005 — 1; 2006 — 10; 2007 — 5; 2008 — 2.
“The intent was to give a safe option to pregnant women who were not handling their situation very well and who didn’t believe that they had safe options,” said Liz McDonough, a human services spokeswoman. “It has resulted in 31 cases where there had been potential of a child facing some harm and they didn’t as a result of the safe haven law. It is meeting its intent.”
The law requires the parent to perform any act necessary to protect the health of the child.
The mother in Aurora did not strictly follow the law, Lucy said, and she could face possible charges of neglect, although that is a secondary consideration at this point.
Lucy said that the woman willingly gave the child to the good Samaritans.
“She reached out with the sheet. She didn’t say, ‘No, no, no’, when the couple took the child,” said the detective. “This was a lucky baby who landed in the right hands. The baby is stable. The baby is doing well.”
Linda Prudhomme, executive director of Colorado Safe Haven for Newborns, noted that National Safe Haven Awareness Day was Tuesday.
She said that what happened in Aurora was unusual.
Statistics compiled by the group, whose goal is to promote awareness of the Safe Haven law, is that women who abandon their babies are usually 19-year-old college students who “have something to lose” and don’t want to tell their parents.
“It is not a part of their family culture,” she said of the college women who abandon the babies.
She said that one of the most touching stories in Colorado is that of a college woman who initially gave her baby up at an Aurora hospital but then reconsidered her decision.
The woman told her mother that she had given birth to the baby and taken the child to the hospital. When the mother told her daughter she would help raise the child, they returned to the hospital and told authorities they’d like to raise the baby.
After a Social Services evaluation, the agency allowed the birth mom to raise the child. She has been doing that successfully for seven years, said Prudhomme.
Usually when a baby is taken to a hospital or fire station, the mother is relinquishing her right to raise the child, said Prudhomme. But that is not set in stone, and the mother can change her mind and ask to raise the child — a request that will be evaluated, said Prudhomme.
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson contributed to this report.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
