Man Found This Baby In A Car Seat By The Road, He Also Discovered The Items Left With Him

When one man found a month-old baby by the side of the road, the discovery shocked him beyond belief. Then, when police discovered the items that had been left with the child, the mystery grew even more confusing, and naturally officers did all they could to get to the bottom of the conundrum.

The man who first found the child was Roger Prater, who serves as the church youth group leader at Abba’s House Worship Center in Ada, Oklahoma. As part of his work with the church, he organizes trips for children to enjoy. It was on one such venture, however, that Prater made his fateful discovery.

Specifically, Prater spotted the baby on one evening in September 2017 after he, his wife Nancy, and the kids were at an amusement park. Following their fun-filled day out, the group had left the park just before 4:00 PM to make their way back home. For a while, the journey went without incident.

Then, as the youth group leader was driving down a rural stretch of an Oklahoma interstate, he suddenly noticed something about ten feet from the road. He picked out what looked like a baby’s car seat, and as he got closer, he could see something sitting inside—a doll, perhaps. Furthermore, there was something about the carrier that perturbed Prater, and when he realized exactly what was so odd about the situation, he was stunned.

That’s because the item within the seat wasn’t a doll at all.

“I couldn’t fathom it at first,” he told People in September 2017.

When the little boy’s feet moved, Prater continued to the magazine:

“I told my wife under my breath, ‘I think I see a baby.'”

“What?” she said.

Concerned, the couple decided to stop the van and pull over. As they slowed to a halt, their greatest fears were confirmed. Indeed, Prater and his wife had discovered a living, four-week-old baby seemingly dumped by the side of the interstate.

While there was no telling how long the child had been there, according to Prater, his prospects didn’t look good at first glance.

“His eyes were shut,” Prater explained. “I was freaking out. I thought, ‘Don’t let there be anything wrong with him.'”

The churchgoer rushed to the baby’s aid and picked up the carrier. Thankfully, at that moment, as Prater would add to People, the infant’s eyes popped open. Upon discovering the child was alive, Prater found himself instantly overcome with emotion.

“I started bawling. I was relieved he was okay,” he said to the magazine. “He was just a little fella,” he added. “Thank God we got there in time.”

Since it was hot that day, Prater plucked the baby out of his seat and placed him in the van. He subsequently turned the air conditioning on to cool him down and called the police to notify them of his discovery.

That was when Prater noticed, however, that the baby was actually pretty well cared for.

“He was real clean and had a onesie on,” Prater explained to People. “Beautiful baby.”

This wasn’t the only unusual aspect of the child’s abandonment. When authorities arrived on the scene, for instance, they discovered that whoever had left him had stuffed his car seat with $5,500. The baby’s Social Security card and birth certificate were also right there next to him.

In due course, police transported the infant to a local hospital. Thankfully, doctors determined that he was doing fine. Despite temperatures out on the road pushing past 90 degrees Fahrenheit that afternoon, the child showed no signs of heat-related distress. Consequently, investigators concluded that the baby couldn’t have been left alone for longer than thirty minutes, and his fate could have been far worse had Prater not spotted him.

Using the documents found alongside the baby, police were able to track down his mother.

“The mother was taken to a hospital to be evaluated,” Sergeant Gary Knight from the Oklahoma City Police Department would later reveal to People.

The state would eventually go on to take custody of her child.

Perhaps, though, the mother and her baby would both have been better served if she had taken advantage of Oklahoma’s Safe Haven policy. This framework allows parents to relinquish unwanted infants legally, safely, and confidentially at designated locations, such as hospitals. In 2015, Dawn Geras, president of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation, estimated that more than 3,000 babies throughout the United States had been safely surrendered in this manner since such laws were first introduced.

However, reliable data on the number of infants abandoned illegally in public places remains difficult to pin down. While Geras ventured that roughly 1,400 babies were deserted illegally between 1999 and 2015, she acknowledged that the tracking method may not be entirely comprehensive.

Although the baby Prater found had not been relinquished through legal channels, police confirmed they made no immediate arrests in connection with the incident. Moreover, to protect the identities of everyone involved, authorities chose not to release names to the press.

The overarching priority remained ensuring the infant stayed safe and healthy—and by all accounts, he did.

“The little boy is safe,” Sheree Powell from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services confirmed to People in their September 2017 report.

She added that her agency had already been inundated with inquiries about adoption. After the infant’s story captured national attention across the United States, an outpouring of families stepped forward hoping to offer the child a loving home.

“This baby’s story has touched the hearts of people around the country,” Powell wrote to People.

Prater, meanwhile, chalked his timely arrival up to divine intervention.

“All I know is that God intervened,” he explained to People. “One day when the baby’s old enough to understand, he can call me, and I’ll tell him that it was no fluke that we found him,” he added. “We found him for a reason. I will tell him that God has a plan for his life.”