Cop will "never forget" baby girl found in Amsterdam dumpster in 2014
In October 2014 a seven-day-old baby girl found alive in an underground dumpster in Amsterdam shocked the entire Netherlands. A police officer working in the control room that night still thinks about her, he wrote in a blog posted on Monday. "I will never forget her", he wrote, the Telegraaf reports.
"It's an ordinary Saturday night at the control room in Amsterdam. The usual clubbers head ome. The control room is slowly quieting down and Sunday morning is getting closer. The phone rings, obviously noting special at control room. But what we did not know is that this call will be remembered by all colleagues", the officer writes in his blog, according to the newspaper.
A colleague answered the call. "If it's quiet, you often catch snatches of conversation. But sometimes you hear something that has everyone suddenly pricking their ears. This was such a conversation. It was dead quiet on the floor of the control room."
The officer could only hear his colleague's side of the conversation. "You're standing next to an underground dumpster and there is a sound", "No, I don't think you're crazy", "Why do you think it's a baby and not, for example, a cat?"
Both officers can not imagine a child being in the dumpster and they decide to send a police car without flashing lights and a siren. "Because it will be a cat. I tell the police car that crying was heard from a dumpster, the detector is worried that it is a baby, but we suspect that it is a cat. Still several police cars indicate that they are going. You never know..."
Tensely they wait for the first car to arrive on site, and then the response. "We hear a baby crying!" The officer freezes. "What do you say to something like that? After a few seconds I pull myself together. We and the ambulance service are in the same control room, so you catch a lot. My first reaction is: 'But if it is crying, it's breathing!"
The entire Amsterdam emergency services sprang into action. Ambulances, a Mobile Medical team and the fire department respond. Firefighters open the underground dumpster. "A firefighter crawls into the container and picks up the little baby. It turns out to be a girl of about a week old. She is taken to the hospital, where she was luckily found to be healthy. I ask my colleague to take my place, I have to stpe outside, get some air." the officer writes.
That night the officer could not sleep. "Turning, thinking. What if this child was not found? Where is she from? Did I do well? So I lay there tossing and turning, eventually falling asleep. The girl continues to keep my thoughts busy though."
Two days later, the officer and colleague spoke to the department investigating where the little girl came from. "We are briefed and I get to see some pictures. A small, but healthy girl. She then took a spot in my mind. But I will never forget her." the officer writes.
After over two year's of investigation, including composite sketches and DNA studies, the little girl's parents still have not been found.
