With just a scratch, ‘miracle baby’ fine

Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Emergency workers who found the baby in the snowy wreckage called him a little miracle — born when he was ripped from his mother’s womb as she was killed in a highway crash.

The baby, with only a scratch on his knee, was in fair condition Wednesday. He was named Patrick, in honor of a teen-ager who helped care for him until rescue workers arrived Tuesday morning.

"For the way this baby came into the world, through the hardships this baby survived, it’s a miracle baby," said Jeff Landers, one of the rescue workers. "This child is going to be special."

When paramedic Charles Shepherd pulled back a blanket on the snowy embankment, he found the baby still attached by the umbilical cord to his lifeless mother, 31-year-old Olga Maria Nunes Bera-Cruz, who had been cut in half when she was thrown through the windshield of a tractor-trailer.

The infant was blue and motionless. His father, the truck driver, hovered over both mother and son, sobbing hysterically. Shepherd grabbed the umbilical cord, and the baby started crying.

"I praised the Lord and started to work," Shepherd said.

Shepherd cut the cord and gave the baby oxygen. During the 15-minute dash to the hospital, "I prayed more on that run than any I’ve ever prayed before," he said.

The father, Furtado Boaventura, 42, of Miami, was treated at the hospital for minor injuries and held his son’s tiny hand before the baby was transferred to Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville.

"You could just see it in his eyes, the happiness but also the sadness," Landers said.

Trisha Welch, 18, and other relatives heard the crash from her grandfather’s house and were the first to rush to the scene, covering the baby with a blanket. Otherwise, the baby probably would have died in the 15-degree cold, said Jeff Wilson, an emergency medical technician.

After learning Trisha’s name — a shortened form of Patricia — the father named the baby Patrick.

State Trooper Dwaine Barnett said the truck may have hit a patch of ice.

Boaventura was wearing a seat belt, but the woman was in the sleeping compartment and sat upright as the truck jackknifed, police said. She was thrown through the windshield when the tractor-trailer hit an embankment.

Shepherd said he hoped to visit the baby later this week and arrive bearing gifts, including a Bible. He said other rescue workers said they found an open Bible near the crash.

"He is truly a miracle from God," Shepherd said.