Florida Baby Rescued After Being Abandoned in the Woods an Hour After Birth

Deputies in Polk County, Florida spent hours on Monday asking residents of a mobile home park if they could help them identify a women who left her baby in the woods after giving birth.

Magdalena Gregorio Ordonez told WFTS Tampa Bay that she heard a noise coming from outside her home in Mulberry Saturday at around midnight and thought it was a cat. She called 911 after she went outside to investigate and found a newborn baby lying on the ground in a patch of woods behind her home.

“I was really surprised that they left a poor little girl on the [ground],” her daughter, 12-year-old Eulalia Gregorio, said.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the 6.5-pound newborn baby girl was left for dead on a 50-degree night, roughly an hour after her birth, and still had an umbilical cord and placenta attached to her when she was found, according to the WFTS report. Deputies responded to the Regal Loop Mobile Home Park at 1:47 a.m. and took the baby to the hospital.

A newborn baby was found in the woods in Polk County when a couple who lives nearby heard her crying. Sheriff Grady Judd says she's healthy and very lucky: "Had it not been for a great set of lungs on a healthy baby, she would’ve been dead." @fox35orlando https://t.co/uzCGCAfPNs

— Amy Kaufeldt FOX 35 (@Fox35Amy) January 30, 2023

Judd said the identity of the baby’s mother is still unknown and noted that Florida’s Safe Haven law was created to avoid situations exactly like this.

“You can literally walk up, hand that baby to a firefighter, and drive off, and never disclose who you are, and there’s no criminal liability to that,” Judd explained.

Judd said he named the baby Angel Grace LNU because “she’s as beautiful as an angel” and “it is by the grace of God that she is not dead. LNU is an abbreviation for “Last Name Unknown.” The baby is healthy except for some bug bites she sustained from being left in the woods, according to the report.

“At six-and-a-half pounds, the baby is healthy and she has a great set of lungs. As she was screaming out for help she saved her own life as well,” Judd said. “Had it not been for a great set of lungs on a healthy baby, she would’ve been dead. Had it not been for this wonderful lady and her husband, this baby would’ve been dead.”

The sheriff said if the mother is found, she will most likely face child neglect charges. He added that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office procured DNA samples to take to the FDLE lab in Tampa.