Unidentified Newborn Boy - Highview (W of Lexington) KY

A Highview woman found a newborn baby boy
alive around 6:30 p.m. on August 24, abandoned near a dumpster in some
crumpled up newspaper. Now police are searching for the baby's mother
and neighbors are searching for answers.

"The baby was left there," said Venus Payne,
who lives in the Derby Run Apartments, where the baby was found. "What
if somebody didn't find him?"

Payne says she and her neighbors who live in
the complex in the 6600 block of the Outer Loop are shook up because of
the tiny victim involved.

"He didn't ask to be here and granted the
mother was probably scared and probably felt like she didn't know what
to do," Payne said.

No one is more rattled the 33-year-old woman who found the baby.

She didn't want to be identified, but told us
she was taking out the trash with her 3-year-old when she noticed some
crumpled newspaper next to the dumpster move. She first thought it was
an animal inside the paper, but then saw the baby's foot. The
woman scooped the newborn boy up, brought him inside and called for
help.

Louisville Metro Police spokeswoman Alicia Smiley says by all accounts, the baby appears to be OK.

"It appeared to be two days old perhaps, is what EMS is estimating," Smiley said.

The woman who found the baby says she thought
the baby was born very recently. He was clean, she says, with his cord
still attached. Now police are trying to find his mother.

"If you've noticed that someone recently
became a parent and suddenly the baby isn't there, you know something is
probably suspicious about that," Smiley said. "Give us a call at
574-LMPD."

Payne says she hasn't noticed anyone in the apartment complex who appeared to be close to giving birth.

"We're all family," she said. "We all live out here in Derby Run where we keep an eye on each others children."

Whoever the mother is, Payne says she must have been scared when she abandoned her baby boy.

"We don't know what's going on in her mind,"
she said. "All I'm saying is let's not judge her. Let's not judge her.
Let's pray for her and thank God the baby's alive."

Payne says any of her neighbors would have taken the baby in, had the mother knocked on their doors.

Police say Kentucky does have a safe infant
law which allows mothers to drop babies younger than three days off at a
safe place without the possibility of any charges: a hospital emergency
room, police station, fire station or emergency medical services
provider.

The baby was taken to Kosair Children's
Hospital. Smiley said the child will be kept at Kosair overnight for
observation and will be placed in the custody of the state.

Police say they think they know who gave
birth to a baby who was reported alive but abandoned near a dumpster in
Highview. In a surprising twist, detectives say the woman who called for
help is the baby's mother.

Tuesday night, Crimes Against Children detectives
questioned her for hours. The story she told was as reported previously,
but now detectives believe it was not what happened.

"At this time, I'm not aware that our CACU
detectives are looking at anyone else as the mother," said LMPD
spokeswoman Alicia Smiley.

Police say they're waiting on DNA tests to
confirm it, but they're pretty sure the woman who called 911 around 6:30
Tuesday night to report finding an abandoned baby near a dumpster at
the Derby Run Apartments, actually gave birth to the newborn boy. If
it's confirmed, police will refer the case to the Commonwealth's
Attorney's Office to see if charges are appropriate.

The woman was willing to talk Tuesday night,
minutes after making the emergency call. She said she didn't want to
get anyone in trouble, she just wanted to make sure the baby was safe.

She said she found the baby, wrapped in
newspaper, while taking out the trash with her three year old son. She
originally believed it was an animal because the newspaper was moving
and then saw the baby's foot.

Police say she originally told them the same thing.

"According to her, she found the baby that
she picked up and took back to her apartment, prior to calling 911,"
Smiley said. "Right now we're not sure that that's exactly the sequence
of events as it occurred."

In fact, Smiley says investigators are not sure that the baby was ever near the dumpster.

"That's something we hope to determine is
whether or not the baby was actually outdoors or if it stayed in her
apartment the entire time," Smiley said.

A neighbor said Wednesday that she passed the
dumpster eight minutes before the woman called 911 Tuesday night and
she didn't see any newspaper near the dumpster and didn't hear any cries
from a newborn.

Tuesday night, the woman who police now think
is the mother said she would have liked to keep the baby she claimed to
have just found, but she had kids herself, ages three to 15. She also
said her apartment was crowded with five people already living in the three-bedroom unit.

Kosair Children's Hospital staff say the baby
was a full-term baby boy, seven pounds, who may have even been in-utero
for longer than 40 weeks.

"Today he's doing great," said Kosair Chief
Nursing Officer Cis Gruebbel. "He's not on any oxygen or anything. He's
feeding well and looks, based on clinical findings, as a normal, healthy newborn baby."

Gruebbel says through clinical analysis,
medical staff believes the baby was less than 24 hours old when he
arrived at the hospital. He had to be warmed up because he was a little cold.

When he's released, the state will take custody of newborn.