It must have been a heartbreaking sight during a routine traffic stop — a baby in the backseat, covered in vomit.
But no worries, because West Virginia state troopers knew just what to do.
The baby was found after troopers pulled over a suspected drunk driver earlier this week in Princeton.
The female driver appeared to be drunk, trooper D.C. Graham said about the traffic stop, and the car was a mess: trash throughout and an overwhelming, foul odor. Then he noticed the baby in the backseat, a boy clad only in a diaper, with a bad cough and sitting in an improper child safety seat. And drenched in vomit.
“I’ve been doing this for a while now and that was probably one of the worst things I’ve experienced, seeing a baby in that condition,” Graham told CNN.
Since the state police barracks were less than half a mile away, Graham took the 1-year-old there.
“We brought him in to the barracks and the smell of vomit and feces overtook the room,” said Graham. “The baby was crying profusely. We tried everything. He was just so upset in the condition he was in. There was nothing we could do to get him to stop crying. I said, ‘I can’t let him sit in this.'”
So Graham, who’s a father himself, cleaned the child up in a sink. The boy, who troopers suspect had been sick for awhile, looked pleased as punch during his impromptu sink bath.
“As soon as I got him in there and started washing him off, a smile came on his face,” Graham said.
After the bath Graham wrapped the baby in a towel and watched over him until officials from child protective services showed up about three hours later.
Graham notes a state police troopers’ barracks isn’t exactly baby friendly. So Graham mostly just held the baby and gave him a teddy bear to play with.
“He was kind of just my little sidekick for a couple of hours,” he said.
The baby is now with a legal guardian; the driver — the child’s mother — faces DUI charges.
And what was the boy’s name? Graham said they never found out. The mother was simply too intoxicated to answer that question.
