If there’s never a good time to crash a car, there’s surely no worse time than when your pregnant daughter goes into labor and you’re rushing to get her to hospital.
Precisely that nightmarish scenario unfolded on a Georgia highway last week, when a woman gave birth on her way to a medical facility at the very moment her mom lost control of their vehicle.
But although the newborn gave everyone a fright, temporarily going missing in the mayhem, it’s safe to say all’s well that ends well.
Crystan Graham went into labor before dawn last Monday with mom Krystal Jones on hand to drive her daughter to the Gwinnett Medical Center in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Fox 5 reports.
However, as Jones sped down the Lawrenceville Highway in less than ideal conditions, her SUV skidded across the wet road, crashing into the gate of the BAPS Hindu Temple in Lilburn, near Atlanta.
Graham, sitting in the back seat, had somehow managed to give birth to her baby girl at the time of the crash.
Yet in the dark and chaotic aftermath of the impact neither Graham nor Jones could find the newborn.
Luckily, three officers from the Lilburn Police Department were in the vicinity.
Officer Danny Bride, who happened to be passing by just seconds before the crash, approached the scene while his body camera recorded the encounter.
Seeing the distraught occupants of the wrecked vehicle frantically searching, he asked “Where was the baby at?”
‘In her womb!’ Jones said. ‘She was giving birth!’
“We thought the baby might have gone out the window because there was so much debris in the back,” Bride later told Fox 5. “Our concern was whether the baby got tossed into the back seat or got tossed through the window.”
Two other officers on the scene, Cepeda Huff and Sergeant Matt Madden, scanned the surrounding area with their flashlights in the pitch-black darkness, illuminating shards of glass and other debris from the accident.
“With the Georgia red clay and a newborn baby, I was thinking it was blending in with the mud,” Huff said.
Bride then asked Huff to check under the middle row seat of the SUV after he spotted part of the umbilical cord poking out.
(Lilburn PD)
That was the moment Huff found the newborn – miraculously alive and well.
“There is like a small little drop-off under the seat,” Huff said. “And that’s where the baby laid right into a little pocket. And that’s where I found her.”
Huff carefully gathered the infant in his arms and rushed her over to a waiting ambulance.
The officers then ran over to deliver the good news.
“We got your baby,” Bride told the new mom and grandmother. “Looks to be fine. She’s breathing and moving just fine.”
“Thank you Jesus!” Jones said. “She’s alive!”
The baby, Cea Anderson, is now recovering at the Gwinnett Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit. She weighed 3 pounds 9 ounces.
Her mom is already out of hospital and her grandmother is calling the three Lilburn cops her angels.
“It’s a great way to end a shift and it’s just about being in the right place and the right time,” officer Bride said.