The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

WHEN police constable LePetra Sands heard screams for help at Princess Margaret Hospital last month, she sprang into action and unexpectedly helped deliver a woman’s baby in a car across the street.

PC Sands said she ran toward the car after no one else responded to a woman’s plea. Outside, she found the woman trying to conceal another woman from people trying to record the event.

When she asked what happened, the woman told her: “I can’t say it. I need you to see it.”

That’s when she walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle and “saw the baby’s head.”

She said when the young mother sat up, baby Amanii entered the world by slowly sliding onto the seat.

The boy’s mother, Reshae Bowe, was not due until March, but after experiencing pain, she drove herself to the hospital and parked across the street.

“It only could be God because of how the baby was situated,” PC Sands said. “How she was situated in the seat, the baby was actually supposed to drop on the floor, because she was so close to the end of the driver’s seat. But when she went up, he just laid right on the driver’s seat.”

PC Sands said watching movies about childbirth helped her respond to the situation. She also received tips from the police control room.

She said after ensuring the umbilical cord was not wrapped around the baby’s neck, she wrapped the child up and quickly took him to PMH.

“All I kept saying, God, please keep him alive,” she said, “because at the end of the day, we don’t know what he could become in life.”

The experience was emotional for the officer because of her own recent childbirth experience.

 “I cried because I know the feeling when something unexpected like that happens, and you don’t know the outcome of the situation, and it wasn’t like the female had persons around to say, okay, they’re going to make sure she’s okay,” she said.

 “I said I have to be selfless in this situation because if it were me, I would want somebody to assist me, and I tried my best to make sure the baby was good.”

 She said she still checks on the baby, praying for a bright future for him.

 She wants to educate herself more about delivering babies in case something similar happens again.

 As for the child, Ms Bowe said he is doing well and should be discharged from the hospital this week.

 “It was a breath of relief when they came because he actually came out in the sun,” she said.