BOSTON -- Two black women were spotted inside a car parked in the wrong direction on the street in front of the Newton home where a newborn baby was left on a doorstep, police said Thursday.
The baby, a black girl given the name Leah by nurses at Newton Wellesley Hospital, was found on the doorstep of a couple's home at 91 Moulton St. at noon on Wednesday -- just a few hours after being delivered. The hospital released a picture of the girl's footprint on Thursday afternoon.
A witness told police that she saw a black woman in her 30s wearing sunglasses behind the wheel and another black woman slumped down in the passenger seat at about 11:35 a.m. Police said that when the witness approached the car, an older-model dark-green Jetta, it sped away.
"It is a call out to the public that if they know someone driving a car like that to give our department a call. We'd like to look into it," Newton Police Department Lt. Bruce Apotheker said.
A man who lives at the home found the baby in a carryall bag that was placed on a pillow and wrapped in a red blanket. A note left with the basket read, "Please take good care of this child."
"A child has been left on my doorstep," the man said when he called 911. "It fits in a small basket. It's a baby. I just went out to check the temperature outside to go on an errand, and there was a bassinet with a child in it and a little note."
Doctors said that they believe the newborn was delivered between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Wednesday.
"To leave a baby out on someone's doorstep, anything could have happened to that child," Apotheker said.
Police said that there appears to be no connection between the baby and the home where she was left.
"I wondered what the bag was doing there, so I went up closer and I saw the face. I thought, 'Who is this?'" the resident said.
Officials are still trying to find the baby's mother.
In 2004, Massachusetts enacted the Safe Haven Act, which allows a parent to legally surrender newborn infants 7 days old or younger at a hospital, police station or manned fire station without facing criminal prosecution.
"They could have brought (the baby) to a hospital, a fire station or police station to a staffed worker and turned them over and said, 'I am under the Baby Safe Haven Law, and I just need to drop this baby off to you. I don't know what else to do,'" said Renee Marcou, of Baby Safe Haven New England.
