Toddler wandering barefoot on ‘incredibly stormy’ night found by Lyft driver, Calif. cops say
As rains pounded Northern California earlier this week — flooding rivers, roadways and more — a Lyft driver spotted something odd on the side of a street in Santa Rosa, according to police.
An 18-month old girl was wandering outside alone in the rain Tuesday night, police wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday. She was barefoot and wasn’t wearing proper clothes for the “incredibly stormy” weather, police said. The driver, Del Hedrick, got out of his car to get the child.
“I’m dropping someone off in this apartment complex, found this little baby walking around — no shoes on, no nothing,” Hedrick said in a video he recorded, which police shared in the Facebook post. “The cops are on their way.”
The video clip shows a little girl in a pink outfit sitting on Hedrick’s lap in the car, with her face blurred out. Police hailed Hedrick as a “community hero.”
“Del Hedrick’s actions demonstrate how we all work together to keep our community safe,” police wrote. “His initiative to shelter the toddler and help reunite her with her family is both heartening and inspiring.”
Hedrick brought the child to the nearby apartment to see if anyone’s door was ajar, or if there was any indication someone was missing a child, according to police. He wasn’t successful, but by the time officers got to the area, Hedrick was “keeping her warm and safe inside his vehicle,” police wrote.
Officers kept searching for the child’s caretaker, and ultimately found her family, police said. The girl was unharmed.
Sgt. Jeneane Kucker said the girl was found in the city’s Roseland neighborhood around 10:30 p.m., the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports.
“It was a total oversight by a babysitter ... not realizing the child was gone,” Kucker said, adding that criminal charges won’t be considered, according to the Press Democrat. “Looks like an open-door kind of thing.”
Storms across California are dumping heavy rains and causing flooding, and Santa Rosa and the rest of the North Bay were no exception: Storms first rolled in around 7 p.m. on Tuesday, several hours before the girl was found, and by Wednesday at 11 a.m. a Santa Rosa weather gauge had recorded nearly 3 inches of rainfall, SFGate reports.
“We’ve seen one-hour precipitation rates of almost up to a half-inch of rain an hour in Santa Rosa,” said Spencer Tanger, a National Weather Service meteorologist, SFGate reports. “I think for the North Bay, this might be the biggest storm they’ve seen so far this year.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Toddler wandering barefoot on ‘incredibly stormy’ night found by Lyft driver, Calif. cops say."
