A policeman in China rescued a newborn baby stuck in a toilet of public restroom face-down on Tuesday. He gently pulled out the infant by reaching his arm down into a pipe.
According to a report from the Associated Press, the baby girl is in stable condition at a hospital in Beijing. Police are trying to identify her parents and investigate how she ended up in the toilet.
"I am probably the first one to hold this child," Officer Qian Feng said to Chinese media.
The Associated Press reported that Chinese broadcaster Beijing Television aired a video taken by police of the rescue. Qin heard cries in a public restroom in a Beijing alley.
"On Sunday, police spotted the child's feet in the toilet pipe and called for help from firefighters, but before they could arrive, Qian got down on the ground to pull the baby out," the Associated Press wrote, citing local media.
The Associated Press cited local TV reports indicating that the baby weighed 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds). Police and medical staff indicated that the child's umbilical cord was pulled off instead of being cut.
"Beijing police confirmed the report but gave few details on their official microblog," the Associated Press wrote. "They said the infant did not appear to have any physical defects."
Feng described the condition of the baby during the rescue to Shen Lu and Steven Jiang of CNN.
"Her head was upside down and her body was falling into the drain. We could only vaguely see her feet from the side," Feng said.
Feng added that while police wanted to dismantle the toilet, he noted that the process would take too long.
"She just kept crying," Feng said. "I looked again, and thought we should try to pull her out even if the possibility might be slim."
Feng described how the baby was stuck in the toilet. CNN reported that the police video showed him reaching his right hand into the drain.
"There is a right-angled pipe inside the train, and the baby was almost trapped in the horizontal pipe," Feng said.
CNN reported that after the baby was pulled out of the pipe, residents help police wrap the child up before sending her to hospital.
The Associated Press reported that babies are abandoned in China for several reasons. Some of them included the social stigma associated with out-of-wedlock births and parents abandoning their children born with defects.
Wang Zhenyao, co-founder of China's welfare policy, told CNN in a 2014 interview that there are more than 100,000 children abandoned in China.
