Daniela Fedele and her husband find newborn baby abandoned along walking trail in Katy as police now seek to identify man seen in surveillance video placing child along walking bridge and then sprinting away. Newborn still had its umbilical cord attached.
Police are seeking to identify a man seen in surveillance video abandoning a newborn baby girl (with her umbilical cord still attached) along a walking trail after a couple in Texas who were making their way amid ‘searing heat’ came across the child and saved her.
Daniela Fedele and her husband were making their way along the trail in Katy early Saturday when the pair noticed something moving in front of them.
‘I noticed two little feet moving and then my husband was right behind me with the dogs and I yelled to my husband and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, a baby, a baby,’’ Daniela Fedele told KHOU.
‘And then my husband [says] like, ‘Call 911, call 911,’ and that’s what we did,’ she said.
‘Once my husband went ahead and picked up the baby, he found the nearest, like tree, right there at the house down the street. He found a little shade,’ she told the outlet.
The newborn was discovered in a towel on a bridge over a creek in Katy where temperatures soared to 95 degrees over the weekend.
While the identity of the newly born girl was unknown, police were now hoping to locate a mystery man caught on surveillance slowly walking up to the bridge and placing down the helpless child, initially walking back slowly before breaking into a sprint to avoid detection.
The baby ‘still had fresh placenta … so it was freshly born’ that morning, Harris County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Juan Garcia told KHOU.
‘I was shocked, I was mad, I was upset,’ Fedele recalled of finding the baby girl alone. ‘You can drop it off at a fire station, a police station, a hospital, I don’t know… but don’t leave the baby.’
The couple then waited for cops to arrive before handing the child over to officials who transported her to the Methodist Hospital in Katy. The newborn is said to be in good condition.
Garcia praised Fedele and her husband as ‘a blessing’ for saving the baby. The offical said that the Fedeles ‘were in the right place at the right time.’
Posted Garcia in an update on X: ‘We are seeking info about a young Hispanic or White male, slim, fair complexion with black hair, that was holding the infant wrapped in a towel. He was wearing a black shirt, possibly gray pants. The male was on foot on the Plantation.’
Texas has a safe haven law that allows parents to surrender newborns up to 60 days old to an employee of any hospital, fire station, or emergency medical services (EMS) station.
Neither the suspect seen on neighbor’s surveillance who dumped the baby nor the mom who have birth to her have yet been identified, cops said.
