Most often when you hear screaming and crying coming from the dark woods, you don’t run toward the sound. Typically you would call for help, let someone trained to deal with that sort of thing search the woods. But Magdalena Ordonez did the opposite.
Ordonez and her husband went outside at 2 a.m. to find out what was making all the racket outside their Florida home. “A lady thought she heard some cats screaming and fighting at about midnight going into Saturday morning, and then it quieted down,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
Then, at about an hour and a half later, she heard this screaming and crying again, and she went outside and said, ‘Well, that’s a baby.'”
Judd said that the little girl was “very healthy,” but had “some insect bites for being in the woods at least an hour and a half wrapped in some old blankets and left there with still the umbilical cord and placenta attached.” Police took the newborn baby girl to a local hospital where doctors said she was healthy and in stable condition.
A newborn baby was discovered during the night in the woods behind this mobile home park in Florida. Photo by WFTS
The little girl only weighed 6.5 pounds, Judd said. “It’s an event that we don’t see very often because there are safe haven laws,” he said. Those laws, Judd said, allow newborns to be surrendered safely, up to a week old. Judd gave the little baby the name Angel Grace Lnu.
“She’s as beautiful as an angel. It’s by the grace of God she is not dead, and Lnu is: Last Name Unknown,” he said. Nearly 10 months later, the police department released a statement that a couple had adopted the little girl. “We have an exciting update to share with you,” police posted on their Facebook page.
A couple adopted this baby girl who was abandoned in a wooded field. The little girl is 10 months old and doing well. Photo from Polk County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook
“We are thrilled to share with you these photos from this morning of this precious angel with her new mom and dad, along with PCSO’s Detective Green and Sgt. Ryan,” the sheriff’s office said. The couple declined to have their names published, but allowed the department to share the photos, Judd said. He said that despite their best efforts to locate the child’s birth mother, they were unsuccessful.
Usually it’s a younger person who does not want the child or has somehow hidden the presence of the child from their parents,” he said.
The sheriff wanted to make sure that the public understands that there are options that are better than leaving a baby alone in the cold. “You can legally take a baby a week or less in age to a fire station, EMS station or a hospital and hand it over anonymously and you have no criminal proceedings against you for child neglect or abandonment or anything like that,” he said. According to A Safe Haven For Newborns website, there have been 376 babies left at a Safe Haven site in Florida. Watch below for a look at this little girl’s happy ending!
