Remarkable body camera video captured the gut-wrenching moment an abandoned newborn girl was found alive in a plastic grocery bag in Georgia.
The little girl, temporarily named India, was found in good condition along a road in Forsyth County at about 10 p.m on June 6, Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman said at a news conference the next day.
Weeks later, the baby has still not been identified. The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday said it was releasing some of the body camera footage from the scene in the hopes of getting information on India's identity.
It was residents who heard the baby's cry and called 911 that night, the sheriff said.
"It was obvious that the baby was a newborn. We believe within hours of our discovery that the baby had been born," he said.
In the body cam video, the crying baby is heard as responders rush to help. The deputies take her out of the plastic bag and scoop her up into a makeshift blanket as little India wraps her hand around an officer's finger.
"She's a sweetheart," one officer says.
The sheriff's office said Tuesday that "baby India is thriving and is in the care of the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services."
We want to understand and find out how this baby was abandoned.
The state has laws allowing for the safe surrender of newborn children.
"Georgia Safe Haven Law allows a mother up to 30 days after the birth of an infant to drop that infant off at a hospital, a fire station, a police station, a sheriff's station," the sheriff stressed. "And as long as they turn it over to a person, a live human being, they cannot be charged with abandonment, cruelty to children. It is a way to make sure that a child like this is safely cared for."
Anyone with information about Baby India's identity is asked to call the tip line at 770-888-7308.
"We want to understand and find out how this baby was abandoned," Freeman said on June 7. "Thirty-two years, this is the first one I've had of an abandoned child in this manner."
