BRANDON, Miss. (AP) — A routine road closure for a transportation worker in Mississippi turned into the quick delivery of a baby on the interstate.
Wayne Evans, Superintendent II with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, was getting ready to shut down a lane Monday morning on I-20 near Brandon.
That’s when a car pulled up with its emergency lights flashing, and two women got out of the car.
“They were in desperate need for something,” Evans said in an interview shared online by MDOT. When Evans approached the car, he found a third woman in labor in the backseat.
“It was going to happen pretty quick and I knew they weren’t gonna make it to the hospital,” he said.
So, Evans got a first aid kit from his truck, put on a pair of gloves and helped deliver the baby boy.
“He put his gloves on, and got his umbilical cord from around his neck, and he helped me deliver,” new mom Desire’e Thomas told WAPT-TV. “I do want to tell him thank you and I’m glad he didn’t panic or nothing, he was so calm and nice.”
Evans said he believes his Marine Corps training kicked in.
“I was never trained to do anything like that, but still the calmness of it and trying to keep the others calm and trying to make this thing happen,” he said.
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