A newborn girl was found abandoned at the bottom of a staircase in a busy subway station in Midtown on Monday morning, according to the police and an internal police document.
The police received an anonymous 911 call around 9:30 a.m. about the baby, who was discovered at the base of the staircase in a subway passageway at the 34th Street-Penn Station stop, according to the report and investigators inside the station. Her umbilical cord was still attached, according to a state official with knowledge of the matter.
She had been placed on the floor by a water drain inside the passageway, which leads to the northbound platform of the No. 1 train line, the investigators said.
Officers took the newborn to Bellevue Hospital, the report said. She was in stable condition, conscious and alert.
It was unclear who abandoned the baby, the police said. No arrests have been made, and investigators were reviewing surveillance video.
“I’m calling it the miracle on 34th Street,” Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit, said at a news conference on Monday.
According to New York State law, abandoning a child under 14 years old is a felony. But there are several exceptions under the Abandoned Infant Protection Act. To avoid prosecution, a parent must leave a newborn in the care of a reliable individual or in a safe location, such as a police precinct, a fire station or hospital. A parent is not required to identify himself or herself if the baby is younger than 30 days old, the law says.
Only a handful of babies have been found abandoned in the city subway system.
In July 2014, Frankea Dabbs, then 20, was charged with abandoning her 11-month-old daughter at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Ms. Dabbs, who was homeless, had left the child in a red polka-dot stroller.
In August 2000, a man found a newborn boy on the floor of the Union Square subway station on Eighth Avenue. The child — nicknamed “baby Ace” — was in a corner behind the turnstiles, wrapped in an oversized black sweatshirt.
The man, Danny Stewart, and his husband, Peter Mercurio, later adopted the boy.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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