Retired NYPD detective looking for baby he delivered 25 years ago: 'It's always stayed in my mind'
The baby girl was born on Marmion Avenue in the Bronx in 1994.
A retired New York Police Department detective has never forgotten the baby girl he helped deliver 25 years ago, and is now hoping to find her.
In the summer of 1994, Detective Angel Maysonet was 24 years old -- about the same age that baby would be now -- and had been on the force for two years. He was working the overnight patrol shift at the 48th Precinct when a call came in for a woman in labor.
"Typically during the summer months, especially at that time of night, EMS was in what we call backlog, inundated with calls," Maysonet told ABC News. "They typically sent a patrol until to make sure everything was OK in advance."
This ended up being a blessed event and we were lucky enough to be a part of it.
Maysonet and his partner reached the call at Marmion Avenue in the Bronx and raced up the stairs to a top floor apartment, where they found a woman lying in the middle of the living room floor, "basically giving birth," he recalled.
The expectant mother didn't speak English, but Maysonet speaks Spanish and said he tried to calm her down with "all the cliche things you say to a woman that's giving birth."
The woman's sister "told me she was a nurse in Honduras so she was trying to walk me through stuff, but she was just panicking," he said.
As Maysonet's partner tried to keep the expectant mom calm, "I noticed the baby wasn't crowning," he said. "I saw a body part, possibly a shoulder...I turned the baby's head and she came out!"
The woman's sister rushed to clamp and cut the umbilical cord, he said.
"We were dumbfounded that this happened," said the retired detective.
Several children were in the apartment at the time, but they slept through the birth, he said.
Then EMS crews arrived and once they wrapped the baby up in a blanket, "she got quiet as kitten," he said.
"We brought her downstairs," Maysonet said. "One of the other cops who worked in the precinct, he always carried around a disposable camera" -- and that's when the joyous photo was snapped.
Maysonet, now a father of three, retired in 2014. He said he often wonders who that baby girl became.
"It was such a great event. Usually when police are called it's bad news, a bad situation. And this ended up being a blessed event and we were lucky enough to be a part of it," he said. "It's always stayed in my mind."
Related Topics
