“It was since yesterday about 11pm that this baby has been crying but we thought it was a neighbor’s child. All through the night, he was crying,” a witness who discovered the baby recounted.
Inhabitants of the Terre Rouge-Damas neighborhood in Yaounde in the Center Region are in shock after a two-month-old baby was found abandoned in the area. The baby boy was found and rescued in a maize farm in the early hours of yesterday Monday June 2 after he was presumably abandoned by his mother. It is believed that the baby was abandoned late into the nights of Sunday June 1, according to inhabitants of the locality. Nkomo Merlin who discovered the baby said she found the child after hearing prolonged distress cry from a baby and followed the direction of the cry to trace the baby. “It was since yesterday about 11pm that this baby has been crying but we thought it was a neighbor’s child.
All through the night, he was crying,” the witness recounted. “I just said to myself that maybe the mother is an irresponsible woman or first-time mother who doesn’t know how to calm the baby,” she further told Yaounde-based reporters who had rushed to the scene of the shocking incident after news of the discovery went out at daybreak. Nkomo Merlin said she was particular urged to engage in tracing the baby after she woke up in the early hours of the morning to commence her daily chores and noticed that the baby’s cry had become even louder. “I heard a pear fruit falling outside, so I decided to go pick it up.
It was in the process of searching that the baby’ s cry even louder and so I decided to trace the baby only to discover the baby had been abandoned,” Nkomo Merlin said. Another witness told reporters that she had also heard the baby crying but ignored, believing that the cry was that of one of the babies in the compound where she is residing. “At about 11pm, we heard a baby cry but since we are in a very big compound, we felt that it was one of the babies in the compound. The cry was persistent throughout the night but on and off until about 6am when I was preparing to go for sports and I heard a neighbor screaming,” she said. “He had no socks on nor pant excerpt for the diaper on… Inside the bag we found a few dresses, baby body creams and his hospital booklet, she recounted,” Nkomo Merlin who found the baby, reiterated, stressing that the baby was found with a cloth box of the baby dropped at the entrance of the maize farm.
Officers of the Yaounde No7 Police Station in Efoulan have launched investigations to uncover the suspects behind the action while the baby has been handed over to the social service for care.
