A newborn boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in freezing weather in Alaska on New Year’s Eve—with a heartbreaking note saying the parents did not have food or money.
The temperature was just 1 degree when a Fairbanks woman spotted the blanket-filled box near her home. Alaska police said the child was taken to the hospital and “was found to be in good health.”
The note left with the infant—headlined “Please help me!!!”—indicated he was born 12 weeks premature, though authorities did not confirm that.
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‘My parents and grandparents don’t have food or money to raise me,” the handwritten note said. “They NEVER wanted to do this to me.
“My mom is so sad to do this,” it continued. “Please take me and find me a LOVING FAMILY. My parents are begging whoever finds me. My name is Teshawn.”
The note was posted in video by a Facebook user with the handle Roxy Lane. She also posted video of herself pulling back the blankets to show a baby nestled beneath.
“I’ve been processing my feelings all day and running through all the different scenarios and reasons, with my bf and family, as to why something like this could have happened,” Lane wrote.
She suggested that the parents might be too young to realize that Alaska has a safe haven law that allows unwanted babies to be dropped with police, firefighters, or paramedics until they are 21 days old.
“I hope the mother gets the help she might need. I doubt they could have afforded to take her to the hospital and she may be in need of medical attention. Please, someone knows this new mom, check on her! She might be in a desperate situation, feeling abandoned herself,” Lane wrote.
She used the discovery of Teshawn to call for unity in the Fairbanks community.
“Clearly, someone in our community felt so lost and hopeless that they made probably the hardest choice of their lives to leave that innocent life on the side of the road with nothing but some blankets and a name,” she wrote.
“But she named him! There's some love there, even if she made a terrible decision. I know we're all struggling, I see it. I see you. I love you all and I'm here. Today I saved a baby and I’ll probably think about Teshawn for the rest of my life.”
In a message to The Daily Beast, Lane said she released the video only “in the hopes that everyone involved got the help they might need and that whatever justice needed to be served would be served.”
“I only hope for more awareness in the community, and maybe some compassion for a difficult situation for everyone involved,” she said, declining an interview.
The Alaska Daily News said Fairbanks Memorial Hospital reported that “the baby is doing well and very healthy.”
