Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Welfare Englewood chimp leaves baby at door way

A 24-year-old Englewood woman was charged with abandoning her 1-year-old daughter in a Gresham neighborhood apartment building vestibule.
Johnetta Smith, of the 5800 block of South Wolcott Avenue, is due in court Wednesday.
She's charged with one felony count of child abandonment, according to police.
The child was found over the weekend by two people who said a woman approached them and asked for a cell phone to report a child in the lobby of a building in the 8200 block of South Justine Street.
She left before the pair could get a phone but they found the child.Police said Saturday the baby found alone in an apartment entryway Friday night has been identified, and that they are seeking to identify her mother.
The identity of the girl, 1, has not been released.
Also on the Saturday, the man and woman who said they found the girl said they were notified of her presence by a woman in the neighborhood before finding her next to a bag of clean diapers and a sippy cup on the ground of a two-flat building vestibule.Thomas Freeman, 50, said he was walking down the 8200 block of South Justine Street about 11:30 p.m. on Friday to visit a friend when a young woman who appeared to be in her 20s asked to borrow his cellphone and told him a baby was left in a nearby building.
"I just thought it was strange that she knew … that the baby was in there. You couldn't see the baby standing from the sidewalk," Freeman said.
Freeman said before he could respond to her request for his phone she walked away from him. So Freeman said he went to the friend he was visiting next door, Arleasia Lee, she grabbed a flashlight and the two of them approached the building. After peering through the front door, they saw something that looked like a toy wrapped up in a purple blanket on the ground of the building's entry, with a gas can and a bucket full of rock salt nearby, Freeman said.
"When I looked you couldn't tell that it was a baby, maybe a doll or something like that," Freeman said.
That's when the pair called 911 and discovered the front door to the building was open. When asked by paramedics if the baby was breathing, Lee said she approached the child, pulled the cover from her face and let her hand hover above her mouth and nose. She felt warm breath.
"I could look at her and see her little fat face. It looked like she was well-fed. She looked healthy; she looked like she was just asleep," Lee said, adding "it just pulls my heart out."
Freeman and Lee said they don't know anyone who lives in the two-flat and were unable to reach anyone who lives there last night. Freeman said paramedics took the baby away. And he wonders about the woman he watched walk away.
"It's just probably desperate times. People do desperate things," Freeman said.

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