Robert Deane was waiting for a package Monday at his home in Indianapolis when he looked out the window on the chilly, 27-degree afternoon. He noticed something unusual across the street.
“I saw one car seat in the ditch,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
“Something didn’t seem right about it,” he added. “It was so cold.”
When Deane crossed the street to take a closer look, he found a second car seat a few feet away. And each held a baby girl. One of the girls wasn’t wearing a hat and appeared to have windburn on her face, Deane recalled. She was screaming.
Deane, who was identified in The Indianapolis Star, said he had immediately grabbed both seats and brought the babies inside his home, where he called authorities.
“One of them wasn’t crying, which was really concerning to me,” Deane said. “The only thing on my mind was getting them inside my house and getting them warm.”
It was not immediately clear how long the babies, who were 4 and 5 months old, were left outside on a day when the National Weather Service in Indianapolis had warned that highs were “struggling to get out of the 20s across Central Indiana.”
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said it was investigating who could have ditched the girls. Their abandonment in the cold was linked to the theft of a vehicle, a 2013 Hyundai Sonata, earlier in the day from a nearby location, according to local news reports.
Deane called for emergency assistance and paramedics were sent to his home to check on the girls.
The vehicle had been taken from a home about 4 miles away from Deane’s residence, according to local TV station CBS4.
At the scene, Sgt. William Young of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police told the station that the department was looking into why the children were left inside the vehicle.
The Police Department had shared a photo of the car, a silver sedan, as well as of the babies when it asked for help in locating them. The department had not released the identities of the parents, but said that a sticker on the vehicle’s rear window bore a person’s name.
In the photos released by the police when they were searching for the vehicle Monday, both girls are dressed warmly in sweaters and sweatpants. One girl, wearing a light green sweater and a pink hat, is smiling. The other, in a pastel pink sweater and beige hat, appears to be crying.
“The stolen vehicle has been located, and we can confirm the children have been located safe,” the Police Department shared in an update.
The police did not provide any additional information on whether the department had identified a suspect or someone had been taken into custody.
“This remains an ongoing investigation,” the department said in a statement Tuesday.
Deane, 41, who is married and has a 19-month-old daughter, said he was glad he had been of some help.
“I would hope someone would do the same for me and my young daughter,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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