A Miracle Baby
It's being called a holiday miracle, a baby born after his mother is torn in half during a car accident.
As many stories begin, it was a dark and snowy night in Russell County, Kentucky. A tractor-trailer, carrying a man and his fiancee was traveling down U.S. 127 near Lake Cumberland. As the truck hit a patch of ice, it jack knifed and hit an embankment. The woman, Olga Maria Nunes Bera-Cruz, who was eight months pregnant, was thrown from the truck and dragged a short distance. Her body was torn in half as she struck a road sign.
In the 15 degree weather, some neighbors rush to the scene to see what had happened. After seeing the lower half of the mother's body, the girl also sees an umbilical cord and follows it with her eyes to spy a tiny baby. She and her mother start crying and she runs to the house to get a blanket for the baby. She said that as she picked him up he began crying.
Within five minutes of the wreck the fire department and Russell County Emergency Medical Teams were on the scene. Charles Shepherd, an EMT, saw the woman and girl holding the blanket, he found the baby inside and promptly felt for a pulse, cut the cord and took the baby into the ambulance where he administered oxygen and worked at rewarming the baby.
The father, Furtado P. Boaventura, who suffered only minor injuries, was crying over his wife and baby as the fire department helped him. He was able to hold his son's hand briefly before the baby was air lifted to Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, KY.
The baby, named Patrick, for the girl, Trisha Welch, who wrapped him in a blanket, is in fair condition today, upgraded from critical. Spokeswoman for the hospital says that he is a really beautiful baby boy. She also told us that many people had been calling for the rights to talk about the story, including USA Today, national news shows and more.
Boaventura was wearing a seat belt. Bera-Cruz was in the sleeping compartment, not wearing a seat belt. She sat up as the accident occurred allowing her to be thrown from the compartment, out of the windshield as the truck hit the embankment, according to police.
Workers at the scene say that a Bible was found near the baby, opened to John chapter 20. They say that this is the sign that it is a true miracle, as if we needed another reason to believe.
