A “freshly born” eight-pound, six ounce newborn baby girl, covered in blood and afterbirth, was found alive in a Myrtle Beach, SC dumpster last Thursday afternoon.
“A small noise coming from a dumpster in Fairway Village first alerted two brothers. When they realized it sounded like crying, one teen jumped into the dumpster and found the newborn baby girl trapped inside a plastic bag.
“I….I heard it and I instantly knew it was a baby and she was crying, so I jumped in the garbage can, or the dumpster, and I started moving bags away. I got two or three bags down and saw the baby’s face pressed against the bag,” said Austin Detray.
He immediately told his brother to go upstairs for help, realizing the baby girl was still alive and suffocating in the plastic bag.
“It was tied shut…it was, it was horrible. I ripped it open and the umbilical cord was still there, the placenta, it was just born,” Detray said.
Police said Detray pulled the plastic trash bag out of the receptacle and found the baby inside. He began yelling for people to contact 911.
At that point, the two boys’ mother rushed to the scene and was able to clear out the baby’s mouth and nasal passages so she could breathe.
“So…what I did was….got towels and took care of her. I named her. I named her Hope. Because I have hope for her and I pray, and if anything comes from this I want to make sure she is okay,” Jessica Detray said.
Detray said many of the witnesses were holding back tears when they rescued Hope.
The mother, 23-year-old Shelby Harper Taylor, was charged with one count of attempted murder. Taylor was released on $10,000 bond and told she can’t have contact with children unless the Department of Social Services approves.
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The Horry County Police Department told WMBF’s Brooke Holden the baby was transported to Waccamaw Medical Center, after initially being treated by Emergency Medical Services. The baby was said to be in stable condition and could have been born several hours before.
A witness told police she saw an unfamiliar white vehicle in the area with two females in the car Thursday morning, according to Holden. Another witness said she saw the same vehicle.
“Police released pictures of the woman wanted in connection to the case shortly after the newborn baby girl was found alive in a dumpster on Fairway Village Road Thursday afternoon,” Holden reported. “She turned herself in to the Horry County Police Department at the South Precinct, according to Lt. Raul Denis. She was transported to Conway Emergency Room for a health evaluation, police say.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared at National Right to Life News Today.
