Consequences of Beryl: Texas truck driver finds abandoned baby near Louisiana highway

CNN
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A truck driver found a 1-year-old boy alive in a ditch off a Louisiana highway this week, a day after the boy’s 4-year-old brother was found dead near the same highway. Investigators believe it was a case of abandonment, around the time tropical storm conditions hit the region, authorities said.

The boys’ mother, a Louisiana resident, was arrested in Mississippi and faces murder and other charges. She is accused of abandoning the children in Louisiana, authorities said Thursday.

A Louisiana sheriff believes the 1-year-old spent two days along Interstate 10 while Hurricane Beryl or its weaker variants battered the western Gulf Coast region with rain and high winds. He praised the truck driver for seeing the child and stopping to pick him up on Tuesday.

“We consider this one-year-old our miracle baby (because) he was still alive,” Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Stitch Guillory said this week. “This child spent two days on the side of the road in that weather. … Thank God the trucker saw him.”

The investigation began Monday afternoon when the 4-year-old boy’s body was found floating in the water behind a rest stop on I-10 in Calcasieu Parish in western Louisiana, just across the Texas border, the sheriff’s office said. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

That day, Beryl made landfall in Texas as a hurricane and weakened to a tropical storm and tropical depression as it reached Louisiana, bringing rain and wind gusts of up to 60 mph to the community, CNN meteorologists report.

Investigators eventually found that the 4-year-old was last seen Saturday with his mother, 25-year-old Aaliyah Jack of Lake Charles, and his 1-year-old brother, the sheriff’s office said. Police in Meridian, Mississippi, then found Jack without the 1-year-old, and she was initially arrested there on suspicion of failing to report a missing child, authorities said.

And on Tuesday morning, the 1-year-old turned up – alive – on I-10 in Louisiana, authorities said.

Truck driver Reginald Walton was driving on I-10 when he saw something “over on the right side of the … embankment,” he told CNN affiliate KADN, adding that he thought it was a doll that someone had thrown out of a car.

“But as I walked by, I saw it moving and said, ‘Hey, that looks like a baby,'” Walton, of Texas, told KADN.

Walton was traveling 60-75 miles per hour and it took him about a quarter of a mile to stop the truck, he said. He called 911, stopped the truck and ran back, he told KADN.

“And sure enough, there was a little boy sitting down there on the bank. As I walked up to him, he smiled at me, then he stood up, started crying and came toward me,” Walton said.

The 1-year-old was found near mile marker 10 – about 9 miles from the rest stop where his brother was found dead the day before, the sheriff’s office said.

Officials identified the boy as Jack’s 1-year-old son. He was taken to a hospital and later turned over to the state Department of Children and Family Services, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kayla Vincent told CNN.

On Thursday, Jack – who remains in custody in Mississippi – was charged in Louisiana with first-degree murder, cruelty to a juvenile and two counts of failure to report a missing child, the sheriff’s department said.

It is not known whether she has a lawyer.

Although Guillory said he believes the 1-year-old spent two days on I-10 – including Monday when Beryl swept through the area – the sheriff’s office has not said whether investigators know exactly when the siblings were left behind.

Walton, meanwhile, told KADN that he doesn’t feel like a hero.

“I just feel like it was God’s will that I be in the right place at the right time,” he told KADN.

Grandmother: “I just want my grandchild back”

Conswella Jack, Aaliyah Jack’s mother and the children’s grandmother, told CNN she last saw the children on Saturday at their mother’s funeral, after which her daughter took over. Conswella Jack said she and her daughter had an agreement whereby the grandmother would generally care for the two boys, but Aaliyah Jack could see them at any time.

Conswella Jack learned of her 4-year-old grandson’s death on Tuesday after his paternal grandmother called to tell her about it, she said. A detective called her shortly afterward to confirm the death. She doesn’t know what led to the boy’s death or how her 1-year-old grandson ended up on the side of the road, she told CNN.

“I don’t know how something like this could have happened. … What I know right now is that I just want my grandchild back,” the grandmother said.

Conswella was living in Houston when she heard the news and has since moved to Lake Charles, she said. She calls child welfare services daily for updates on her surviving grandson, she said.

“I don’t know what to think. I buried my mother on Saturday and now I find out about this,” said Conswella Jack.

She described her four-year-old grandson as “a great kid.”

“I’m sorry, baby…that you’re gone. I’m so sorry,” she said.

The grandmother said Thursday she had not yet spoken to her daughter to find out what happened and hoped to be reunited with her surviving grandson soon.

CNN’s Taylor Ward contributed to this report.