News
A man who dropped off a 2-day-old boy at a fire station last week did so legally under Nevada's Safe Haven law, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.
Officer Barbara Morgan, a spokeswoman with the Metropolitan Police Department, said no charges will be pursued against the unidentified man who left the infant under the care of a county firefighter Friday at a station near Lake Mead and Nellis boulevards.
The Safe Haven law, passed in 2001, allows parents to legally leave a child within 30 days of birth with an emergency service provider.
Advocates of the law called what happened a textbook example of how it was meant to work.
Previously, despite the law, babies had continued to be found, abandoned or dead, in trash bins, restrooms and elsewhere in Clark County.
"This is the first time people are talking about it as a success story instead of people talking about it as 'Oh, someone should have,'" said Assemblywoman April Mastroluca, D-Henderson, who was a staunch supporter of the bill before it became law.
The man who dropped off the baby identified himself as a relative of the mother. State law allows a child's parent to direct someone else to leave a child with an emergency provider.
Morgan said police don't know the identity of the man but have received no indication the child is missing.
"If a 2-day-old baby was kidnapped, the parents would be screaming from the rooftops," Morgan said. "We haven't heard anything like that."
Christine Skorupski, a spokeswoman for Clark County Child Protective Services, said last week's incident marks the first time in the county that a child has legally been handed off under the law.
Skorupski said Tuesday afternoon that the baby remained at University Medical Center. Protective services has custody of the child, she said.
Skorupski said in general terms, if parents want to reclaim custody of a child passed off, under the law they will have to go through the courts.
If a person allows the provider to take possession of the child, that child is presumed abandoned. The law adds that unless the parent contacts the child welfare agency, a local child action will be taken to terminate his or her parental rights.
Scott Allison, a spokesman for the Clark County Fire Department, said the man did not leave any information regarding where the child's parents could be reached.
