A newborn baby was found abandoned Tuesday morning, tucked inside a set of dresser drawers that were discarded in a Chicago alley, according to police.
The deserted infant was in good condition at Lurie Children’s Hospital after being discovered at 8:30 a.m. in the 2300 block of North Oak Park Avenue, on the city’s Northwest Side, ABC7 Chicago reported.
A passing woman chanced upon the baby after she stopped to check out the hardware on the dresser drawers, with thoughts of recycling them for money, the station reported.
When she pulled open one of the drawers, she was shocked to find a baby wrapped in a rosary.
“I put my finger on the little foot, to just to see he was moving,” the unidentified woman told NBC Chicago.
From there, she called authorities.
The newborn’s mouth was filled with vomit, and the woman said she rendered first aid until emergency officials arrived.
“I found him; that is [the] greatest thing,” the woman told NBC Chicago.
Residents of the Montclare neighborhood struggled to make sense of why someone would leave a helpless baby alone in an alleyway.
“It’s very heartbreaking to hear something like that,” resident Candy Pittner told ABC7. “I don’t get it. I really don’t because you have so many other places, you could have dropped it at a hospital...firehouse, church. You could have even rang my doorbell I would have taken the baby and left. Anything but leaving it in that drawer.”
The woman who found the child described the circumstances as a miracle.
“Every time I think about the little details, it just makes me mad,” she added. “So I’m just gonna focus on the miracle that I was there, and that everybody showed up on time because I was shaking. I was shaking so bad.”
Police have not indicated whether they have any leads in the case.
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