Oh, baby Mountainside officers team up for special delivery
n BY Amber Ramundo
The roads were slick and law enforcement staff was spread thin in Mountainside on the night before Saint Patrick’ s Day. A call came over the radio for a car accident, which was no surprise for a night with snow on the ground. At the same time, Mountainside Local 126 received a call to all units for a female going into labor.
The events that followed led three Local 126 officers to quickly overcome the elements to assist in the delivery of a newborn child, an act that earned them each a new bar to wear proudly on their uniforms.
Officer Stephen King was the first to respond to the home at approximately 2 a. m. The driveway led up a winding hill packed with sheets of patchy ice and snow left over from the snowfall throughout the week.
The front door was open, and as King stepped inside, he was prepared for whatever situation he was about to walk into. He figured after three years working as a law enforcement officer in the Bronx he had seen almost everything. King quickly found that he had never been involved in a call quite like this.
“ I’ m going up the stairs and basically I see the husband and wife trying to make it down,” King recalled.“ They’ re asking how long it’ s going to take for the ambulance to be here. I made a call to the EMT and no time was given.”
King and the husband, Springfield Officer Brandon Lorenz, helped the expecting mother, Connie Lorenz, outside to wait for the EMTs. Connie kept calm but urgently announced that the baby’ s head was already starting to crown. With no time to wait, King laid his jacket down on top of the snowy driveway for the mother, and he and the two parents went to work delivering the family’ s third child.
“ The mom was a trouper,” King shared.“ She wasn’ t screaming or anything. She looked at the situation and knew that if she was panicking maybe that would have made everyone else panic.”
Officer Stephen DeVito and Corporal Donald Amberg arrived
From left, Mountainside Chief Allan Attanasio, Officer Stephen King, Connie Lorenz holding McKenna, Brandon Lorenz, Corporal Donald Amberg and Officer Stephen DeVito gathered at the city council meeting where the officers who helped deliver McKenna were honored.
on scene to find Connie, Brandon and King starting the delivery in the driveway. The officers gathered around them, using flashlights for light while assisting in any way they knew how. Within minutes, they were able to breathe a deep sigh of relief as they heard the first cry of a newborn baby girl.
“ It was such a chaotic scene,” King described about a moment he will never forget.“ As soon as that baby girl was born and we heard her crying, you could definitely tell the relief from the father and the mother, and everybody else who was there,”
The officers worked to keep the baby and mother warm in the 20-degree chill until paramedics arrived. With the baby still attached by the umbilical cord, the officers were extremely careful lifting mother and child onto the stretcher and into the emergency vehicle to be transported to Overlook Medical Center in Summit.
“ We really don’ t get much training for those kinds of things,” Local 126 State Delegate Christopher Feighner noted.“ Our training is pretty quick and then it’ s really up to the guys to want to learn how to do it. They acted and did what they had to do.”
Though King made it clear that Connie Lorenz was the true hero of this story, the work of King, DeVito and Amberg ensured the safety of mother and child on that cold March morning when baby girl McKenna, weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces, was brought into the world.
“ Brandon and his wife were great,” stressed Amberg.“ We’ re just happy that the two of them and their baby are healthy and safe.”
Officers King, DeVito and Amberg were honored for their actions assisting in this birth at a Mountainside City Council meeting the week after the incident with the healthy family there to thank them. Each officer received a new pink bar with a stork on it to represent the safe delivery of the baby girl. d
42 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ April 2017