A newborn baby girl – left in a cardboard box on a road in Taipei – was found by cyclists who rode past the “shaking box” early on Wednesday.
A 56-year-old man who found the baby, still with an umbilical cord attached, said in comments posted online that he was heading to a construction site in Zhonghe district with friends to play Pokémon Go, when he saw the shaking box, which he initially presumed had an abandoned kitten inside it, the Taiwan Apple Daily reported.
Instead, he found a newborn baby wrapped in a green towel and a black jacket. The man immediately called the police to take care of the child.
Officers sent the newborn, who seemed to have mild hypothermia, to a hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, police managed to locate a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman surnamed Nguyen believed to be the baby’s mother on Wednesday afternoon by going to a factory, whose address was printed on the cardboard box, then heading to a hostel for workers for the company.
The young mother, who arrived at Taiwan as a migrant worker in March last year, admitted to officers that she gave birth at around 6pm on March 26, but decided to abandon the girl because she lacked the financial ability to raise the child.
She said the biological father was another migrant worker who had returned to Vietnam earlier this year.
The woman said she hid her pregnancy, fearing she would be sacked or repatriated, and did not inform her employer or employment agency. She even went to work on the night shift at the factory as usual after having the baby.
Police referred the suspect to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, where she was barred from leaving the country.