Miracle survival: Baby rescued from lagoon
Published: January 30, 2006
A BABY girl has been fished alive from a lagoon in Brazil after being dumped in the water tied up inside a black plastic bag.
Brazilian television has shown amateur video of a park worker who, after hearing cries coming from the water, used a branch to drag the bag out of Pampulha Lake.
It is a popular weekend recreation area full of walkers, joggers and cyclists in Brazil’s third largest city, Belo Horizonte, about 300 miles north-east of São Paulo.
A crowd of onlookers expected to find a cat inside but were shocked to rip open the bag and find instead a crying baby wearing a soaking pink dress.
She was taken to hospital where doctors said that, apart from being hungry, she showed no signs of having being harmed during her ordeal. Hospital staff estimate that the infant is about two months old. “She is in good condition,” Dr Claudia Guimaraes said. “It’s a miracle she survived the heat and somehow didn’t drown.” The rescue started when José da Cruz heard a crying noise coming from the water while walking in the area.
“I thought it was a cat,” said Senhor da Cruz. “Then the noise was increasing and it caught my attention. When I looked towards the water, I heard the noise coming from a bag about three metres from the edge. So I got a piece of wood and pulled the sack out of the water.”
Firemen say the baby did not drown because inside the bag with her was a small plank of wood that may have been intended to act as a weight. Instead, it helped the baby to stay afloat until her rescuers could pull her from the water.
The amateur video shows the bag was almost completely submerged by the time Senhor da Cruz managed to pull it from the water.
Police arrested the baby’s mother yesterday, but she denied throwing the girl into the lake, Globo TV reported.
The woman gave the baby to a group of homeless people, she said, because she could not afford to raise the child. The girl may be put up for adoption.
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