A newborn baby boy was found dead after being left in freezing conditions outside a Chicago fire station.
Firefighters went outside the Near North Side fire station to shovel snow away at about 5am on Saturday morning when they tragically found the baby left inside a duffel bag.
The area is a "safe haven" spot where people are allowed to leave children but babies have to be given over personally.
A spokesman at the fire department said the crews had been so busy nobody heard the doorbell.
They added that the baby had been left by an air supply maintenance facility which means fire crews are often elsewhere servicing supplies at other stations.
“They were in and out so much that morning that no one heard the doorbell,” Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
“We’re trying to make it clear that you have to make contact. Ringing a bell is not making contact. You have to physically see someone and hand the child over,” Langford said.
“If the person left the child there, and we don’t recommend it, and called 911 to say the child is there, somebody would’ve been dispatched right there.”
A police investigation is under way and so far it is unknown whether the baby was alive when he was left there or how long he was lying in the snow.
The fire station is a designated safe haven site where children can be handed over without giving explanations - but state law says that babies under 30 days old have to be handed over person to person.
The newborn’s cause of death has not yet been determined after the autopsy was deemed inconclusive.
Dawn Geras, head of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation, reiterated that it is important for babies to be handed over to somebody at a safe haven spot whether it be a fire station, hospital or police station
She said: “That baby might need urgent medical care. It makes no sense that you leave a baby out in freezing temperatures for any amount of time and expect them to survive.”
