A newborn baby with his umbilical cord still attached was discovered by a homeless person in a rubbish bin close to a Lisbon discotheque last night.
The little boy was found early but after dark on Tuesday evening. It’s not known exactly at what time he was abandoned, but some reports suggest it could have been as many hours before as during the morning.
The child was in a “very fragile state” and rushed to the city’s D. Estefânia children’s hospital where he is now said to be “clinically fine and stable”.
PJ and PSP police are investigating in a bid to discover who abandoned the baby in such a way as to put his survival so seriously at risk.
The rubbish bin was on Lisbon’s Avenida Infante D. Henrique, closed to nightclub Lux Frágil and Santa Apolónia railway station.
UPDATE:
CMTV has managed to interview the homeless man who found the child, who explained that the little boy hadn’t simply been left in a rubbish bin, he had been dropped into a recycling ‘eco-point’ (for plastics and metal).
The child was lying naked on the discarded plastic and metal objects, freezing cold and ‘purple’.
It was his cries that alerted the man who became so horrified when he spied the baby that he “started screaming” and pulling at the opening of the eco-point to try and get to him.
Staff from the disco then helped try and warm the little boy with blankets and other soft material as INEM and PSP were called.
The baby’s rescuer told CMTV he is traumatised by the fact that anyone could have dropped a human being into a rubbish bin, particularly a newly-born one.
“You wouldn’t do that to an animal”, he said.
A PSP agent has told reporters that there are clearly various crimes at issue here though the circumstances have to be clarified.
The principle crime is ‘child abandonment’. It is not yet clear yet whether this was an attempt to murder, but it is obvious that no attempts were made to leave the child in any way protected.
“He was put into the rubbish in the way he came into this world”, said the agent.
Detectives will now be doing everything they can to try and establish the identity of the child’s mother, and who it was who left him helpless in a recycling bin.
The child’s rescuer has been asked to ‘keep his ears and eyes open’ to any couples who may be sleeping rough in the area, or to any talk that may be exchanged in the homeless community.
Say reports, once the baby is released from hospital, he will be placed on the list of children requiring urgent adoption.
