Rookie’s First Day ‘Amazing’ Cop Finds Critically Injured Newborn In Garbage Can On First Day Of Work

It would have unnerved even a veteran cop. But the 25-year-old rookie officer who pulled an abandoned newborn from a Tukwila, Wash., McDonald’s garbage can Monday had only graduated from the Washington State Police Academy on Friday.

It was Tukwila police officer Craig Gardner’s first day on the job.

He said academy training hadn’t quite prepared him for the suspicious-circumstances call he responded to about 7 a.m. Monday.

“This was the last thing that I thought would happen,” Gardner said. “It was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I hope I never see anything like it again.

“I opened up the garbage can and I could not believe what I saw in there,” he said. “I believe what I saw was the placenta and then I saw it move and heard it cry and I knew it was a baby.

“My heart went down to my knees.”

Gardner said he ripped away a plastic bag the baby was wrapped in, laid the baby on its side and discovered the boy was breathing.

“I just kept talking to him telling him he was going to be all right, that he was going to live,” Gardner said.

The full-term baby boy, weighing 6 to 7 pounds, was in critical condition Tuesday at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Seattle, said a hospital spokesman.

The baby suffered a skull fracture, which may have resulted from being dropped into the garbage can, detectives said.

The child will be taken into custody by state Child Protective Services; a caseworker has been assigned.

Meanwhile, Tukwila police detectives continue to question the Kent, Wash., woman arrested for leaving the newborn in the trash can. Monday, she told detectives she didn’t know she was pregnant and she thought the infant was dead when she gave birth on the edge of a flower bed in the parking lot.

The woman, a 20-year-old University of Washington chemistry major, also told detectives she’d given birth once before and given that child up for adoption, a Tukwila police sergeant said.

The woman could face charges ranging from first-degree criminal mistreatment of a child to attempted homicide.

The woman, who had been living in a university dormitory and was enrolled in summer classes, recently moved home with her parents, Tukwila police Major Crimes Sgt. Dave Rekow said. Her parents said they didn’t know their daughter was pregnant, he said.

Rekow said he found it hard to believe that the woman didn’t know she was pregnant.

“That’s the question in everybody’s mind,” Rekow said. “I don’t know if it will ever be answered.”

Police were called to McDonald’s about 7:30 a.m. Monday when a customer reported seeing a woman with blood on her clothing cradling a bundle of something wrapped in newspapers. When blood also was found in a stall in the women’s restroom and in the parking lot, officers began searching trash bins and found the infant in a garbage container at the edge of the parking lot.

A witness noted the license plate on the woman’s car when she drove off; it was traced to the woman’s parents. She was arrested about noon on the University of Washington campus.