A police escort into the world - Passer-by and detectives help woman deliver breech baby

Two Milwaukee police detectives investigating an armed robbery early Thursday ended up helping to deliver a little bundle of joy.

Detectives Dolores Beaver and Vincent Lopez said they were waiting for police identification technician John Heim at the scene of an armed robbery in the 2800 block of W. Lisbon Ave. about 2 a.m. when a man told them a woman was in distress a few blocks away.

They found the woman sitting on concrete stairs outside a child care center, pregnant and in tremendous pain.

"I looked under her dress, and I could see two little feet coming out," Beaver said at a news conference later Thursday. "We called the med unit but knew there wasn't time because the baby was coming."

By this time, Heim had arrived with a blanket that he put down for the woman to lie on while Lopez and the passer-by, Ernest Hays, held the woman's back and her legs.

The delivery was complicated by the breech birth and the woman's inability to speak English, said Heim. The woman, who police would not identify, is Hmong.

Lopez said he tried to get the woman to breathe by mimicking breathing and tried to get her to push, although "push" was hard to translate.

"The baby was coming out, but it just came out to the neck," he said.

Soon paramedics arrived, and the delivery was quickly completed because the baby's umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck, said Beaver.

The mother, 27, and the newborn boy were taken to a hospital and were reported to be doing well, Beaver said.

Speaking later through a translator, the mother told police that she had gone into labor earlier in the evening but didn't have a telephone. "She said she started walking to her sister-in-law's, but the pain became so great that she couldn't go on and sat down on the steps of the child care center," said Beaver.

"It was a great experience -- refreshing to help someone out," said Lopez. He said it helped that he became a father a year ago.

"It was nice to help someone," Beaver said. "We see so much bad that it's wonderful as a mom to help bring a new life into the world."