NYPD sergeant pulls over speeding car, finds woman giving birth on way to hospital

A New York police sergeant made a surprising discovery when he pulled over a speeding car just before midnight on the Staten Island Expressway: a woman in the middle of giving birth.

Sgt. Anthony Delmonte, a former EMT and paramedic, sprung into action after seeing the newborn's head crowning.

"When I saw the crowning I said, 'This is happening now,'" Delmonte told ABC News.

The woman and her husband, who was driving, were heading eastbound on the expressway trying to make it to the hospital late Thursday.

"They were not gonna wait until they got to the hospital," Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Friday in a daily briefing on Twitter. "At least the baby wasn't gonna wait."

The commissioner said the baby was safely delivered in the car.

Delmonte then drove the new parents to the hospital with "one hand on the wheel, one hand pinching the umbilical cord," Shea said.

Officer Adam May, who was with Delmonte at the car stop, said, "You could hear the doctors and nurses cry out at the sight of a newborn baby."

Shea also said the couple and their newborn were met with cheers.

"Cheering to have something good to root for in this time," he said, referring to the novel coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of at least 97,200 in the world and at least 16,703 people in the United States. "In every dark day, there's always light."