According to WXIN, Corey Cannon was driving to work on Sept. 22 when he noticed something odd. It was about 6 p.m. and Cannon saw what looked like a life-size baby doll in the middle of the road.
Yet when the doll started to move, the New Jersey resident realized the truth: It wasn’t a doll at all, but a baby — and that baby had just crawled across the middle of a residential street.
“I thought it was a toy or something until (the baby) moved,” he told the Asbury Park Press. “I knew I needed to get some sort of proof, and my GPS was open on my phone, so I used my work vehicle to slow down traffic behind me and took the pic as I was exiting the vehicle and halting oncoming cars.
“I believe (the baby) crawled right out of the front door.” Cannon removed the child from the road, called local police and cared for the infant until authorities arrived.
About that time, a neighbor showed up and took the baby back home. WPIX reported that the parents didn’t know the child had escaped until the neighbor knocked on their door.
Police later said that the baby’s grand escape might’ve happened thanks to the “help” of a sibling. The parents claimed that another child had left the door open.
Nearby resident Mary Bauer said, “It’s horrible, and it’s not the parents’ fault because babies do climb out of cribs.” Cannon, though, wasn’t so sure.
He posted the pictures of the infant in the middle of the street on Facebook. “Parenting at its absolute worst,” he wrote.
“I thought about my baby girl and wanted to whip this dude’s a– for being so negligent. Some people don’t deserve to have kids.”
Many of the commenters agreed with him. Some even said that the parents should have immediately lost custody and that Cannon ought to have taken the baby immediately to child protective services.
Apparently, child welfare workers have contacted the family. “Anytime you have a child that’s endangered, they get involved to make sure the child is safe,” Lakewood Mayor Ray Coles said.
However, police did not make any arrests. Neighbors maintain that the parents simply made a mistake.
