Chicago firefighters find abandoned baby boy dead in duffel bag outside ...

Chicago firefighters find abandoned baby boy dead in duffel bag outside ...
Chicago firefighters find abandoned baby boy dead in duffel bag outside ...

A newborn baby boy was found dead inside a duffel bag covered in snow on Saturday after he was abandoned outside a Chicago firehouse.

Firefighters at the North Orleans Street firehouse in the North East Side, where temperatures plunged to 25F, went outside to shovel snow around 5am on January 15.

They found a duffel bag with the baby boy's dead body inside beneath a blanket of snow that fell throughout the night. 

The Chicago Police Department said on Monday they have launched an investigation into the incident but no suspects have been identified yet. 

A newborn baby boy was found dead inside a duffel bag covered in snow on Saturday after he was abandoned outside a Chicago firehouse

A newborn baby boy was found dead inside a duffel bag covered in snow on Saturday after he was abandoned outside a Chicago firehouse

Firefighters at the North Orleans Street firehouse in the North East Side, where temperatures plunged to 25F, went outside to shovel snow around 5am on January 15

Firefighters at the North Orleans Street firehouse in the North East Side, where temperatures plunged to 25F, went outside to shovel snow around 5am on January 15

The Chicago Police Department said on Monday they have launched an investigation into the incident but no suspects have been identified yet

The Chicago Police Department said on Monday they have launched an investigation into the incident but no suspects have been identified yet

Firefighters at the North Orleans Street firehouse in the North East Side went outside to shovel snow around 5am on January 15, and found the baby boy inside a duffel bag covered in snow

Firefighters at the North Orleans Street firehouse in the North East Side went outside to shovel snow around 5am on January 15, and found the baby boy inside a duffel bag covered in snow 

Firehouses are safe havens, designated places for mothers to safely and  anonymously surrender their babies, but they are required by law to notify staff to ensure the infants are not left on their own. 

'You must turn the baby over to a staff member,' spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department Larry Langford told DailyMail.com.    

'If the baby was placed there alive, that baby froze to death,' Dawn Geras, of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation, told CBS. 'It's Chicago. It gets cold at night. You can't leave a baby out to the elements.'

The Cook County Medical Examiner Office will conduct an autopsy on the baby Sunday.   

'It's a tragedy that didn't have to happen,' Geras added. 'And it was so close.' 

Laws in all US states protect mothers who wish to surrender their babies from criminal penalties as long as they drop their babies at safe havens, such as fire and police stations or churches where there are adults who can alert authorities.  

The Save Abandoned Babies Foundation helped pass the Abandoned Infant Protection Act in Illinois in 2001.

'It allows the parent to hand over a baby to staff at a hospital, police or fire station,' Geras told CBS. 'The reason they hand the baby over is so that maybe the baby doesn't end up frozen to death and not found.' 

In Illinois babies must be under 30 days old, but if they are not handed over to staff, it still constitutes illegal abandonment. 

Since the safe haven law was passed in the state, more than half of the 85 babies who have been abandoned died, compared to the 100 legally relinquished babies who have all survived, according to Save Abandoned Babies.

'I have anger, real anger and frustration that we've been trying to get the word out there for 20

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