An Arizona highway trooper was responding to a typical traffic violation early Saturday morning when he suddenly had to stop what he was doing and help a woman giving birth roadside.
A car pulled up behind Trooper Miguel Rincon’s patrol vehicle five minutes into the traffic stop. A woman ran up to him and said her granddaughter was in labor and needed to be rushed to the hospital.
According to a press release released by the Arizona Department of Safety, the baby was already beginning to crown, prompting Rincon to drop everything he was doing, call the medics, and think on his feet.
“Once I called for that ambulance, I grabbed some gloves and I was going to grab a blanket,” Rincon told LittleThings. “I ran over to the vehicle and mom was already holding the baby in the passenger seat. It was pretty exciting.”
Rincon’s first instinct was to make sure the baby was breathing.
“I saw that he was crying which is a good sign,” Rincon said. “If he wasn’t, I would’ve responded with CPR, but luckily it didn’t come to that.”
According to the Associated Press, the mother, Courtney Benavidez, was only in labor for an hour and a half. She named her son “Carter Jett” in reference to how quickly he was born. The ambulance arrived less than ten minutes after the baby was born, according to Rincon.
"I was just in shock, and I couldn't believe it," Benavidez told AP on Tuesday. "I think I went pale."
Benavidez and her son were released the next day and are in good health. Rincon told the AP that while he didn’t have medical training in delivery, he relied on his instincts to respond to the situation. Rincon also accompanied the family to the medical center.
"I'm just absolutely thankful and blessed because things could have gone down south very quickly, and I'm just thankful that everything turned out OK," Benavidez told AP.
Rincon himself is a father of three, so he relied on his parent’s intuition to respond to the situation. He thinks that troopers could benefit from training on how to respond to situations like Benavidez’s.
“Is something like this going to happen again? I don’t know,” Rincon says. “Maybe it could, and I think especially for troopers that work in rural areas, basic training would be a great thing to receive.”
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