By Bill Parry
An NYPD highway patrol officer was in the right place at the right time, helping to deliver a baby girl on the Kosciuszko Bridge Sunday afternoon. Police Officer Raphael Mohammed was the first on the scene in response to a 911 call from an Uber driver who was taking an Astoria woman to a Brooklyn hospital.
The woman went into labor in the back seat of the car and the driver pulled over in the southbound lane of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on the Maspeth side of the bridge. When the officer arrived, he saw that the baby had breached and was in great danger.
“The torso and the limbs were presenting, but not the head,” Mohammed told NY1. “Once I got my hands on the baby, the baby was a little lifeless, very cool, purple. And that’s when I realized the umbilical cord for the child was around her neck.”
As Highway Patrol Officer Randal McFarland also arrived and began directing traffic, Mohammed calmed the mother and got to work clearing the newborn’s airway while loosening the umbilical cord.
“Once that airspace was created, I was able to loosen the umbilical cord that was around the neck,” he said. “By doing those two things, I realized the baby started to gasp for air and started to move.”
An ambulance, which had been struck in traffic, finally arrived.
“Once we got the mom and the baby into the ambulance, me and Officer Mohammed escorted the ambulance to Wyckoff Hospital,” McFarland said.
Mohammed had delivered babies before while working as a paramedic, but it was his first time working on one that had breached. He also had to calm the mother’s 2-year-old toddler who was also in the backseat.
The Uber driver, Athanasios Tsakalos, had tried to help the mother, who was not identified by the NYPD.
“At the end of it all, he said to me, ‘Thank God you showed up,’” Mohammed said.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
