Florida police are using DNA to find the parents of three children, all dropped off at a southwest Orlando apartment complex as newborns in three separate years, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
After the third child was left at the same spot last July, an Orlando detective submitted the children’s DNA for testing. The results: All three have the same mother and father.
City commissioners have now approved a $5,000 expenditure to hire a company that works with genetic genealogists to help find the parents.
The 1-day-old baby boy abandoned last July was left with a note and wrapped in a T-shirt, police said. The note “explained the baby was left at the location because the mother was in fear of the child’s father and risk he posed to the child.”
The baby girl left on October 6, 2017, was also left with a note and was fully clothed, police said. That note asked whoever found the girl to take her to a fire station under Florida’s Safe Haven Law, which allows a parent or guardian to leave a newborn 7 days old or younger at a hospital or fire station without facing criminal charges. Orlando police at the time said they had “concerns” for the mother’s safety.
The Sentinel has not yet gotten documents related to the infant abandoned in 2016, but a Sentinel article about the 2017 case mentioned that a baby was left unharmed at a southwest Orlando apartment near Disney World in 2016 and that the mother was not found. The apartment complex where the other two babies were left is just a few miles from the theme park.
Orlando police spokeswoman Heidi Rodriguez said the department hopes to locate the parents “to ensure the safety and well being of the mother and of any other children.”
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