Trucker describes finding ‘miracle baby’ by the side of a highway in Louisiana
NEW ORLEANS — Reginald Walton had just driven his truck into Louisiana, heading east on Interstate 10 after making a delivery in Texas, when he spotted what appeared to be a discarded baby doll lying on the embankment.
Then he saw movement.
“I noticed it moving and I called 911 and told them I thought I saw it. a child “on the side of the road,” Walton told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday.
Walton, of Texarkana, Texas, didn’t know it when he pulled his tractor-trailer over to the side of the road Tuesday morning, but the abandoned infant had been the subject of an intensive search since his 4-year-old brother was found dead the day before. The Calcasieu Parish sheriff later called the surviving child a “miracle child” and said the 1-year-old boy had been left outside alone for about two days as intermittent storms blew in. Hurricane Beryl, who hit Texas on Monday.
Walton said authorities stayed on the phone as he stopped his car. “I was going about 65 or 70 miles an hour in a truck, and it took me about a quarter of a mile to come to a complete stop.”
He then walked back to where he had seen the child as police approached. “When I got to him, he was sitting down and as soon as he made visual contact with me, he was smiling,” Walton recalled. “And then he got up, started crying and walked toward me. And when I grabbed his hand, he stopped crying.”
Walton, who also told his story to KADN-TV in Lake Charles, only discovered the full backstory hours later on the Internet.
On Monday, authorities in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, pulled the boy’s 4-year-old brother from a lake behind an interstate welcome center near the Texas border. The children’s mother was arrested hundreds of miles away in Meridian, Mississippi, and faces multiple charges in Louisiana, including second-degree murder.
Hours after Walton rescued the baby, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Gary “Stitch” Guillory said the child appeared to be in good condition, although he had numerous insect bites. The child would be turned over to state family care authorities.
“It was just sad to know that someone would leave a child on the side of the road,” Walton said Friday. “I was just glad I was the one there — to help him.”