DATE: Friday, June 20, 1997                 TAG: 9706200701

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CINDY CLAYTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   58 lines

BABY FOUND, ALIVE, AT APARTMENTS IN NORFOLK

A maintenance worker found a healthy newborn girl inside a canvas bag in the hallway of an apartment building in the Pamlico neighborhood Thursday morning, police said.

The baby was discovered about 11 a.m. at the Bayshore Gardens Apartments, in the 200 block of W. Bay Ave., said Larry Hill, police spokesman. The apartments are off the northern part of Granby Street.

The baby was taken to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, where she was listed in good condition. Doctors said she was about 12 hours old when found, Hill said.

Her umbilical cord had been cut and she was very clean, Hill said. She was wearing a diaper and wrapped in a sheet. She is black and weighs about 7 pounds, 7 ounces.

Residents of the apartment complex seemed surprised to see police in a neighborhood they described as quiet. Three neighbors returning to the building said they had left before 11 a.m. and didn't see anyone suspicious in the area.

One man whose apartment gives him a view of the building where the girl was found said he saw a car he didn't recognize parked behind his building sometime between 9 and 10 a.m.

The maintenance worker who found the infant was not available for comment Thursday.

The baby is the third to be found in Norfolk in the past 3 1/2 years:

On Christmas Eve 1993, a woman gave birth to a girl at Norfolk Community Hospital, then left the hospital. Police tried to find the mother and the young man who drove her to the hospital, but they never did, Hill said. The girl was turned over to the city's Child Protective Services and later adopted.

In October 1995, a security officer found a boy, only hours old, in a bag in the parking lot of Sentara Leigh Hospital. The parents of the boy, dubbed ``Baby Matthew,'' were never located; he was adopted later, Hill said.

``It's a sad situation when children are abandoned,'' Hill said. ``But as we all know, a lot of other (abandoned baby) cases are a lot worse.''

In about the past two years, three babies have been found dead in the garbage at the regional trash plant in Portsmouth.

Hill said the girl found Thursday would remain in the custody of Child Protective Services unless the parents can be found.

Depending on what investigators find, the parents could face charges of abandonment and felony child neglect. The penalties for these crimes carry from two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

``In cases like this, it's all going to come down to the investigation as to what the circumstances were,'' Hill said. ``We'd just like to find the parents.''

Anyone with information about the parents of the girl is asked to call Crime Line at 664-4040. MEMO: Staff writer Larry W. Brown contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: Map KEYWORDS: ABANDONED CHILD

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