Ke­jan Haynes & Jesse Ramdeo

A new­born in­fant girl dis­cov­ered in a garbage bag along a cor­ri­dor of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal had to re­ceive ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion yes­ter­day. The ba­by was aban­doned by her moth­er, who left a note at­tached to the child, who ap­peared to be a few weeks old.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the moth­er asked the state to take care of the child in the note, as she just did not have the means to take do so her­self.

The child was dis­cov­ered by Emanuel Pierre, 26, who had a job in­ter­view at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

Pierre said some­time be­tween 8.30 and 9 am, he saw a “garbage” bag in a hall­way with its top twist­ed but not tied. He said he heard nois­es from in­side the bag and when he opened it, he made the shock­ing dis­cov­ery.

He said he called out to nurs­es near­by and they ex­am­ined the ba­by and took it for im­me­di­ate treat­ment.

“Well, they came, they looked at it, some of the nurs­es from near­by and they said they had to call the so­cial ser­vices de­part­ment that is in the hos­pi­tal right there and they came and they took it,” Pierre re­called.

He es­ti­mat­ed that the ba­by was on­ly a few weeks old. Pierre has a three-month-old son.

De­spite his act, Pierre said he doesn’t con­sid­er him­self a hero.

“I feel­ing good about it be­cause I was able to save an in­no­cent child’s life,” he said.

He was sad about the cir­cum­stances though.

“Judg­ing from what I saw there, it was a ba­by of Venezue­lan ori­gin,” he said.

“It looks like some­one un­able to take care of the child and just rest it there be­cause as you see, they didn’t kill it or leave it dead or any­thing. [They] just put it where it could be re­trieved. But the way in which it was done was kind of in­hu­mane, see­ing as it was in a bag.”

Pierre con­firmed there was a note in the bag but said he did see what was writ­ten on it.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) al­so not­ed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched to de­ter­mine the cir­cum­stances that led to the in­ci­dent. The SWRHA said it had alert­ed the rel­e­vant part­ner state agen­cies to pro­vide all the nec­es­sary as­sis­tance as re­quired.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the SWRHA hand­ed the note over to the po­lice as ev­i­dence in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. It is al­so un­der­stood that the SWRHA will be the cus­to­di­an of the child un­til the State makes a de­ci­sion on who will care for her.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands no per­son of in­ter­est has yet been iden­ti­fied in the mat­ter.