The runaway two-year-old landed in the arms of police officers way before dawn Monday morning, after she was spotted barefoot and in a diaper, standing alone in front of a neighborhood bodega.
"We were coming through here, then we saw the baby on the corner by itself. Then, one guy stopped, the other guy stopped. Three guys stopped at the same time here, because we never saw something like that before," said Emilio Casso, a livery driver.
Officers went door to door along Euclid Avenue, looking for the toddler's parents.
They hit pay dirt at number 123, about a half block from the bodega.
"When they showed me the baby, I told them that the baby lives upstairs," said Baby Jagmohan, a neighbor.
Police now say the girl's mother had left her with a male neighbor while she went out, and the child somehow walked down the stairs and out the front door.
Both the mother and the neighbor were taken to the 75th precinct.
30-year-old Lady Rosales and 27-year-old Hugo Luna each face charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
But, Baby Jagmohan is defending her upstairs neighbor.
"She's a good person, you know. She's a good mother. She takes care. She's a single mother. She takes care of her kid," Jagmohan said.
Still, for Jagmohan and others in this neighborhood there is a lingering question.
"How baby can go like this outside? Like 2 O'clock in the morning? It's crazy," said Victor Deleon, a neighbor.
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