Police say Lakewood mom admits to abandoning infant son in stranger's front yard, detectives say mom was on drugs
LAKEWOOD - Lakewood police say a mom admitted to leaving her infant son in a stranger's front yard overnight. The mom told detectives she became paranoid after doing drugs.
“I was in shock didn’t think I would recognize the baby on the news,” said a Portland woman.
A woman speaking over the phone tells Q13 News she knows the baby’s mother and father. In fact as soon as she recognized the abandoned baby on TV she called police.
As leads started to come in for detectives, police also got a call from St. Clare Hospital. A woman there claimed she was the infant's mother. The mother ended up at the hospital after someone called 911 around 7 a.m. saying she was running around a busy Lakewood intersection. Police say the caller said she skittish and paranoid and appeared to be looking for something.
“They have plenty of family and friends up there that would have taken the baby,” said the woman.
Lakewood Police say a woman walking along the sidewalk in the 8500 block of John Dower Road Southwest around 1:30 a.m. heard a noise.
At first the pedestrian thought it was a distressed animal, when she got closer, a startling discovery, an infant abandoned in the front yard of a Lakewood home.
“It’s a miracle, there isn’t so many people walking around that time,” neighbor Rahab Njoroge said.
The 3 month old baby boy had no blanket just a onesie on that said ‘little brother.’
No telling how long the baby was laying on the grass in the cold but luckily the baby did not get hypothermia.
Police say the passerby saved the baby's life and the infant is now in CPS custody.
“Anybody in their right mind can’t abandon a baby a 3 month old baby any baby,” Njoroge said.
It's unclear what drugs the mother was using but she told detectives that it made her so paranoid.
“So paranoid she grabbed her child and ran from the residence where she believed people were chasing her, at some point when she was feeling like she was being chased she admits to putting it in somebody’s yard saying she hoped someone would find him later,” Lakewood Police Spokesperson Chris Lawler said.
The Portland woman who knows the mother says others have reported the mom to Child Protective Services many times in the past.
“We kept being told no, this all could have been avoided at least in my eyes,” said the woman.
Detectives say as soon as the mother is cleared from St. Clare Hospital she will be booked for abandoning her baby which is a felony.
As for the father, detectives say it does not appear at this time that he was involved. But the father was taken into custody on Monday when he showed up to the hospital because of an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for his arrest.