Boston Policeman Delivers Baby Girl In Jamaica Plain
BOSTON (CBS) -- A Boston Police sergeant helped deliver a baby girl in Jamaica Plain on Friday.
You can't blame Sergeant Rene Sanchez for some lingering jitters, even after he visited his new friends Saturday in the hospital.
On Friday afternoon, a man scrambled up to Sanchez on Center Street, asking him for a police escort to the emergency room for him and his pregnant wife.
"I observed the wife in the front seat and I could see the dome of the head and I said 'The baby is coming out now,'" he recalled.
Sanchez thought it was too late, but the man was insistent on making the drive, so he began leading the couple toward Boston Medical Center.
But by the time they reached Mozart Street, the sergeant hunkered down for delivery, giving the prospective father his radio to update responding EMTs on the unfolding birth.
"It happened right in the front seat of their car," said the policeman.
Two police officers arrived to help out, but was Sanchez playing the role of doctor.
"It felt like an eternity, but it was about five minutes," he said.
The sergeant delivered the little girl and had to unwrap the umbilical cord from around her neck.
"I'm just saying 'Lord, you better help me through this,'" Sanchez said. "It was something else."
In two decades on the job, Sanchez has never tackled anything like this.
When asked if he got teary-eyed meeting baby Elizabeth and her grateful parents at the hospital, Sanchez said, "You get emotional. We'll leave it at that."
The sergeant's fellow officers are having fun with him following the delivery, calling him "Doctor Sanchez."
