‘No place to deliver a baby alone’: PPB helps woman after she delivers baby on sidewalk, leaves it behind
By DREW MARINE
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PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — Portland Police Officer Nathan Kirby-Glatkowski was going through his case load with his partner Wednesday when he got a call he’ll never forget.
“We were out looking for a serial burglar in the area of inner southwest,” he said. “A call came out on the radio that at Southwest 13th Avenue and Market Street a woman had just given birth on the corner and was walking away from where she gave birth with a lot of blood on her body.”
Kirby-Glatkowski said Portland Fire & Rescue and AMR were already there taking care of the baby girl, who’s healthy and doing okay.
The woman managed to walk just a block away when Kirby-Glatkowski and his partner found her and made sure she was taken care of.
“We encountered somebody who was experiencing some pretty serious mental crisis. Both my partner and I are ECIT officers, enhanced crisis intervention team officers, and we work pretty closely with people in mental crisis at times,” he said. “We had a lot of concern about her safety and making sure we got her to a place to get a medical assessment and get her the help she needed. It’s a cold day. It wasn’t raining at that moment, but it was raining earlier and the sidewalk at Southwest 13th and Market is no place to deliver a baby alone.”
While Kirby-Glatkowski isn’t quite a veteran at the bureau yet, with six years under his belt, he said he’s never responded to a call like this one and not many other officers have either.
“This is in the top 10 strangest calls I’ve ever had. Just spent the last couple of hours talking to plenty of senior officers saying this is one of the career stories basically,” he said.
He said the mom is healthy and doesn’t believe she’ll be facing charges in this case.
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