Family vacationing in NYC thought they saw a doll floating in the river. It was a baby, cops say
An Oklahoma family vacationing in New York City spotted a baby floating in the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge while they were sightseeing on Sunday.
They didn’t think it was human at first. The baby was wearing only a diaper as it bobbed face-up in the water.
“We were trying to see if it was a real baby, it looked kind of like a doll,” Austin Campbell, 19, of Stillwater, told The New York Daily News. “We didn’t know if anyone had actually thrown a baby in there.
“My dad hopped in, pulled the baby out and started to do CPR on it.”
Police on Monday still didn’t know how the baby, said to be about 8 months old, came to be in the water or where his parents or guardians are, the Associated Press reported.
Authorities said he showed no signs of trauma. A medical examiner will determine cause of death, the AP reported.
According to The New York Times, the family had just taken a ferry trip to the Statue of Liberty and were sitting on a bench by the river making dinner plans.
Austin’s mom, Diane, was the first to spot the baby in the water shortly after 4 p.m.
”My mom, she was out here and she was kind of just looking in the water, and she calls my dad over and says ‘there’s a baby in the water!’” Austin told ABC 7 in New York.
Diane Campbell told reporters at the scene - in an interview tweeted by Myles Miller of NY1 - that the baby “wasn’t like stiff or anything, so it had to be in the water like around 4 o’clock.
‘When i spotted the baby it’s little head was under the water but his little legs were over. It was about 11 months old, 11 to ... I’m more than positive 11 months old because I have quite a few kids.”
She took pictures and shot video at the scene and told the Times she hopes the images can help the police identify the baby.
“Someone knows that child,” she told the Times.
Her husband, Monte Campbell, who is a chiropractor, told the Times he called 911 and that when he was put on hold he decided to make sure it was a real baby and not a doll. So he handed the phone to his wife and waded into the water “to get the baby,” he told the Times.
He and police officers called to the scene gave the baby CPR until an ambulance arrived, New York media reported.
The baby was pronounced dead at New York-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital, the Times reported.
“It just doesn’t seem real. I don’t know, I didn’t expect this when I came here,” Austin told the Daily News. “I’m from Oklahoma, we’re from a small town with like 60,000 people ... It’s just unreal, you don’t come to the city expecting to see things like this, to see babies floating in the water.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2018 at 12:21 PM.