It’s the pregnancy nightmare you didn’t know you had.
Crystan Graham went into labor early Monday morning. Her mother, Krystal Jones, tried to rush her to the hospital, but the roads were wet and her car hydroplaned off the Lawrenceville Highway in Lilburn, Georgia, and crashed into the gate of the BAPS Hindu Temple, Fox 5 reported.
Graham somehow gave birth during the crash while sitting in the back seat of her mother’s car. Graham then came to the horrible realization that she could not find her new baby in the dark and wreckage. The baby, which weighed just 3 pounds 9 ounces, was nowhere to be found.
Fox 5 reported that Lilburn police officer Danny Bride “just happened to be driving by the scene seconds before the accident happened.” Officer Cepeda Huff was also in the area, and the two quickly arrived at the scene with body cam footage rolling. A third officer, Police Sgt. Matt Madden, arrived a minute later.
Footage provided to Fox 5 showed Bride walking up to the wrecked car asking, “Where was the baby at?” as Jones said they couldn’t find the newborn.
“We don’t know!” Jones cried. “I was just trying to get to the hospital.”
Bride asked her again where the baby was.
“In her womb!” Jones said. “She was giving birth!”
Bride later spoke to Fox 5 about the incident.
“We thought the baby might have gone out the window because there was so much debris in the back,” he told the outlet. “Our concern was whether the baby got tossed into the backseat or got tossed through the window.”
Huff told Fox 5 that it was difficult to see into the vehicle because of the damage and wet ground in the darkness.
“With the Georgia red clay and a newborn baby, I was thinking it was blending in with the mud,” he said.
They can be seen in the body cam footage searching the vehicle and outside it around the wet ground but not finding the baby.
Finally, Bride can be seen in the body cam footage asking Huff to look under middle-row seat of Jones’ SUV because he thought he might have seen part of the umbilical cord. When Huff checked, he found the tiny baby, alive.
“There is like a small little drop-off under the seat,” Huff told Fox 5. “And that’s where the baby laid right into a little pocket. And that’s where I found her.”
Huff took extra care when picking up the baby girl before the officers rushed her to an ambulance that had arrived on the scene. They then told Graham and Jones they had found the baby.
“We got your baby,” Bride told them. “Looks to be fine. She’s breathing and moving just fine.”
“Thank you, Jesus!” Jones replied. “She’s alive!”
Graham and the baby were taken to Gwinnett Medical Center. Graham has been discharged, while baby Cea Anderson is still being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“It’s a great way to end a shift and it’s just about being in the right place and the right time,” officer Bride told Fox 5.