DURBAN: Durban metro police who were alerted to an abandoned newborn went out of their way to clothe and feed the baby before taking her to a place of safety.
Metro police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Parbhoo Sewpersad said a car guard heard a baby crying in the vicinity of a garden on the Durban beachfront on Monday at noon.
“The car guard alerted metro police who were on beach patrol, and the baby was taken to the metro police station at the beachfront.
“The baby was given a bath, and was changed into new clothes and given formula.”
Sewpersad said the baby was around five weeks old.
“She was thereafter taken to a place of safety, and a case of child abandonment had been opened.”
Sewpersad commended officers for going beyond the line of duty to care for the baby.
In September last year, a Newlands mom who dumped her newborn baby in a stormwater drain was sentenced to three years behind bars.
The unemployed 33-year-old, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the baby and her two other children, was sentenced in the Ntuzuma Magistrate’s Court.
In her guilty plea, she said she was embarrassed to have had a third child out of wedlock.
IOL