A six-month-old baby girl has been found alive in a Missouri lake after her father attempted to drown her. Greenwood police announced that just after 10 a.m. Monday, 28-year-old Jonathon Zicarelli walked into the department office and admitted to drowning his child. Officers rushed to the scene expecting the worst, but miraculous, she had survived.
Corporal T. Calhoun and Police Chief Greg Hallgrimson said that the police were on the scene within minutes, where they discovered the baby floating in the lake, face up. Hallgrimson noted that she looked completely unresponsive and pale, comparing the little infant to a porcelain doll.
They plucked the child out the icy lake and cleared mud and water out of her eyes and mouth before Calhoun performed CPR. To the officer’s great relief, the child then began to breathe normally. The baby’s body temperature had plummetted to a deadly low of just 87.9 degrees, so the officer quickly took off his shirt and wrapped the baby up to keep her warm.
The little one was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for severe hypothermia. In an update given on her condition Tuesday, police said she was “greatly improving” and “continuing to make progress,” according to ABC News.
“The news came down through the chain and there was a huge sigh of relief,” Greenwood police Lt. Aaron Fordham said of the good news released by the hospital on the baby girl’s condition.
Following his admission, Zicarelli was taken into custody and transported to jail. He reportedly told police that he had planned to kill his infant daughter to make things easier on his wife, who was stressed out ahead of the Christmas holidays. According to reports, he was “emotionally removed” from the severity of the situation when handing himself over to police. “There was no emotion whatsoever,” Fordham noted, according to the Kansas City Star.
Speaking of the baby’s miraculous rescue, Fordham, said that “there was absolutely someone watching over that child today.”
Prosecutors have recommended that he be held on a $500,000 cash bond.