Earl Abernathy was driving in the 92-degree heat in a van with no air conditioning last week when he got stuck in a traffic jam on the Near West Side.
As he crawled through stop-and-go traffic with his windows rolled down, Abernathy heard a distinct sound over the honking cars and chatting pedestrians: A crying baby.
Then, on the front steps of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church at 813 W. Roosevelt Road, he saw who was making the noise. Strapped into a car seat that had been tipped over was an infant, who Abernathy later learned was a 7-month-old girl. She had been wriggling around and trying to get free, said Abernathy, of Washington Heights.
“I looked around, seen nobody that’s an adult around, but the baby was trying to get out of the car seat,” Abernathy, 33, told the Sun-Times on Tuesday. “I put the hazards on, jumped out of the car, and ran over to the baby and picked the baby up.”
Abernathy said he felt “crushed” seeing the girl outside the church on a hot day, all alone.
“It really broke my heart,” he said. “Because at first, I didn’t know the whole situation at hand, so I’m just looking at it like, ‘Man, they just dumped this baby off with this church. It’s hot, there’s no water, no milk.'”
As it turns out, the infant had been in the back seat of a vehicle that was stolen from a Lawndale gas station earlier Thursday morning, police said. Jeremy Ochoa allegedly stole the car and then left the baby outside the church. Ochoa, 38, now faces aggravated kidnapping and vehicular hijacking charges.
A church spokesperson said none of the pastors saw what happened and declined to comment further.
After immediately calling 911, Abernathy picked up the infant and starting filming on Facebook live.
“Crazy s- – – just happened to me,” he said in the video. “I’m riding down the street and I see a baby all by [her]self. Anybody recognize this baby? … Somebody left this baby off. They wild as hell.”
Abernathy said Tuesday that he posted the video because “I felt like Facebook would probably reach the parents faster than the police.”
His instincts were correct: The baby’s grandmother, Karen Whittington, ended up joining the Facebook live, and she and other family members let him know that the girl was their relative.
“We were all out of our minds,” a frantic but grateful Whittington told the Sun-Times in a text message Tuesday.
“Well, everyone is OK, and we [are] glad she’s found,” Whittington said.
Abernathy turned the girl over to police once they arrived at the scene. She was later reunited with her family.
Abernathy has stayed in contact with the family, who has reached out to him almost daily to thank him, telling him most people wouldn’t have taken the time to do what he did.
He’s a guidance counselor, assistant basketball coach and security guard at Sullivan House High School on the Far South Side and says it feels good to know his actions potentially saved the child’s life.
Sullivan House works with at-risk students and high school dropouts who have been underserved and disconnected from traditional education, according to its website.
“Working around kids, you know, I always want them to feel safe,” he said. “And they should feel safe around any adult. So it was just like, I just sprung into action, doing my everyday duties.”
His friends and family have been reaching out to offer praise, including an uncle who started a GoFundMe on Abernathy’s behalf. That uncle, Darnell Payne, said in the appeal that he had suffered a stroke last September, “and it was Earl who identified my medical condition and got me help.” Payne said the van that Abernathy was driving last week was his and that Abernathy’s car was out of order. “He deserves some type of blessing for all the times he has been a blessing,” the post said.
“It just seems like over and over in life, Earl has been the type that steps up when you really need him, but no one really steps up for him,” Payne said in an interview.
Abernathy says he’s just happy that the baby girl is back at home now.
“Everybody knows that this is the kind of thing that I always do,” he said. “It’s like nothing new, but it just feels good to see my peers praising me like this. I just always try to be positive.”