YONKERS, N.Y. (PIX11) -- Many questions remain after a days-old baby was found in the hallway of a multi-family home in the southern end of Westchester's largest city.
The infant girl is okay, but the biggest questions surrounding the case are what caused someone to separate from the baby girl, and why they did so where they did.
"This is dangerous around here," said Bree Dale, the mother of a five-year-old, who lives near the building on Chestnut Street where the baby was found. "Why would you just leave a baby?" Dale asked. "You don't know what's going to happen to the baby, what other people's intentions are."
Yonkers Police said they got a call around 8:30 Tuesday night saying that a baby had been found in the first-floor hallway of the building.
Rukiat Smith lives in the building next door to where the newborn was found.
"I could never," she said. "I could never abandon like that."
Smith is also a mother and said that it is important that people know that they can legally leave a baby in a safe place.
"There's pictures all around Yonkers that show where to bring a baby, no questions asked," Smith said.
New York State's Abandoned Infant Protection Act allows a person to drop off a baby within 30 days of birth at a hospital, Police station, or firehouse, with no penalty, if someone is present to receive the child.
That obviously did not happen in this case, but Christopher Sapienza, the Yonkers Police Commissioner, said that his officers' focus is the same as if the baby had been dropped off with them.
"Our primary concern is to make sure the baby's okay, number one," the commissioner said in an interview.
When his officers responded to the building at 32 Chestnut Street, they encountered the family that had found the baby, who was wrapped up in a blanket. She was in decent shape, Commissioner Sapienza said. The responding officers took the baby to a nearby hospital, where she is in stable condition.
Going forward, said Sapienza, "Our very first step is to figure out who left the baby and why because we don't know the story at this point."
Rukiat Smith, the mother who lives next door, said that she thinks the next steps will be medically oriented.
"I'm pretty sure that she's going to show up soon," she said about the baby's mother.
Having gone through multiple childbirths herself, Smith expressed concern. She pointed out that there are serious postpartum medical issues, for which the mother may need help, soon.
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