A Florida resident was arrested on Monday for not telling police officers that the unclothed, newborn baby he found lying outside of a convenience store belonged to his girlfriend.
53-year-old Ralph Garlick Jr. was arrested in DeBary, Fla. at around 2 a.m., after he reportedly told cops that he'd stumbled upon the baby girl in front of a food mart on South Charles R. Bell Boulevard, according to the News-Journal. He also lied about his identity to law enforcement officials, initially calling himself by his late brother Charles' name. He said he heard the baby's cries while walking past the food court, and alerted the driver of a newspaper delivery vehicle for assistance.
"He was just standing there in front of the Winn-Dixie on [U.S.] 17-92 holding the baby and bouncing it up and down a little bit," 37-year-old newspaper carrier Anthony Ackeridge told the News-Journal. "He told me he had just found it across the street at the convenience store."
But further questioning proved that the baby, whose umbilical cord was still attached, but tied off with a shoelace, belonged to his girlfriend.
Garlick is not the father of the child, according to the News-Journal. The woman birthed the baby girl on Monday in an Orange City apartment, then told her 53-year-old boyfriend to get rid of the child.
Video footage from security tapes show Garlick pacing past the food court at about 2 in the morning.
The 53-year-old has been charged with offering false information to police, and resisting an officer without violence, according to the New York Daily News.
The child was unharmed, despite being naked in the frigid air for an extended period of time. Officials took the baby to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, where she was deemed to be in fine condition.
Authorities will hand the baby over to the Florida Department of Children and Families in the coming days.
