WASHINGTON – The unidentified baby found on a sidewalk in January died from hypothermia, according to the District’s medical examiner.
The child’s death is now being investigated as a homicide by D.C. Police.
Temperatures were below freezing in mid-January when Emmanuel Dugger found the naked baby girl on a sidewalk in the 3000 block of Channing Street just before midnight. She was laying only few doors down from his home in Northeast. He thought she was a toy or a doll initially, Dugger said.
The African American baby girl was about one week old and wrapped only in a towel.
Dugger brought the child inside, wrapped her in towels and his father called 911.
The father and son had tears in their eyes as they talked about the infant the day after finding her. They say the baby had blood in her mouth and was bleeding from the nose, but Emmanuel’s father Eugene Dugger says the child still was “a beautiful little baby” with “coffee-colored skin.”
Ian Milne, who lives in the home where the child was found, wished the person who abandoned the child had given some indication she was being left on the step.
“Even a knock on the door and then somebody could take care of it,” Milne says.
Darnell Stubbs, another area resident, says whoever left the child “should be ashamed.”
D.C. does have “Safe Haven Laws,” which allow someone to drop off a child at a safe place such as a firehouse if they’re unable to care for the child.
Virginia and Maryland have similar laws.
WTOP’s Mark Segraves and Neal Augenstein contributed to this report.
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