A 9-year-old girl who spotted a newborn baby wrapped in a towel in her backyard is a "guardian angel," a sheriff said, after the girl's mother alerted Indiana police who helped get the baby to a hospital.
9 y.o. Elysia went out to play in Lowell, IN & found a living newborn. https://t.co/NmSxg3Rvls@cbschicago pic.twitter.com/PqNOU0hoZd
— Brad Edwards (@tvbrad) July 12, 2016
The newborn is expected to survive. Police said her umbilical cord and placenta were still attached, and she may have been in the backyard for as long as a day.
Elysia Laub, the girl who found the baby on Monday, told WBBM she had help finding the baby: from "God." She added, "It just freaked me out, I didn’t know what it was."
Her mother carried the baby inside and called police to their home in Lowell, the Lake County Sheriff's Department reported.
The baby had a sunburn but was doing OK otherwise, officials said. They named her "Miracle Baby Jane Doe."
Police searched the area with dogs and a helicopter but didn't find the mother. Police collected evidence from the scene.
Laub's family reportedly keeps pigs in a pen, so at first the girl said she thought she was looking at a piglet.
"The baby was found in a very rural area, and to think if the 9-year-old wouldn't have gone outside, this could've had a very different outcome," Sheriff John Buncich told reporters. "The department has taken a really personal approach to this case."
He said a foster home would take the baby after doctors released her.
Lowell is about 50 miles southeast of downtown Chicago.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.