INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) — A day after firefighters rescued a newborn from a baby box at an Indiana fire station, the founder of a local ministry says those boxes may be coming to Indianapolis.
Firefighters found the healthy infant after the Safe Haven Baby Box's alarm went off at the volunteer fire department in LaPorte County Sunday evening.
Indiana's Safe Haven law allows a person to anonymously give up a baby younger than 30 days old to an emergency room, police, or fire station without the fear of arrest or prosecution. A law passed earlier this year now lets fire stations use baby boxes if the station is staffed 24 hours a day.
"What's amazing is that what we're doing here in the state of Indiana is pioneering a new way of thinking, and people's minds are being renewed to new options, and ways that we're adding to the Safe Haven Law to make it work better, which we really need - we need enhancement, because we need a place for moms to anonymously surrender," said Linda Znachko, founder of the He Knows Your Name Ministry.
There are only two baby boxes in the entire state, but Znachko is spearheading an effort to install the first one in Marion County. She hopes that will come in the next six months.
After a baby was found abandoned in Eagle Creek Park in 2014, Znachko named her "Amelia" and arranged a proper burial for the child.
"He Knows Your Name will be donating one as soon as I get the go ahead to put one in the particular fire station that I want it in here. I want it at the fire station that was two miles away from where Amelia was found. So I'm working on that and just starting to kind of push through the door of that," Znachko said. "But we don't have one in Hamilton County either, and I really think there needs to be one in Hamilton County. As fast growing as Hamilton County is, we need that to be a very important second location."
Znachko says a baby box will be installed in Ohio by the end of the month and suspects Pennsylvania may get one soon, as well.