A pregnant Queens woman trying to get from New Jersey to a NYC hospital went into labor during rush hour outside the Lincoln Tunnel yesterday morning, and ended up giving birth in the back of a cab—with the help of a well-trained and quick-witted Port Authority Police officer. The unidentified woman had spent the night with her mother in New Jersey, and called a taxi when she started having contractions. But the baby apparently wanted to stay in Jersey, and at 8:35 a.m. the cab driver had the good sense to pull out of traffic at the toll plaza and summon help. Officer Richard Kuncken handled it like a pro.
“I arrived to find the baby was on the way out,” Kuncken, who has 20 years' experience as a paramedic, tells the Wall Street Journal, which reports that Kuncken "rendered the standard post-partum care there at the toll plaza, drying the baby off, cutting the umbilical cord, stimulating crying and giving the newborn oxygen." We're guessing he then passed out cigars to all the toll workers, too.
The newborn girl, named Abigail, and mother were then taken to Hoboken University Hospital, where Kuncken posed for this feel-good photo. “It was a routine child birth,” he adds. "With the exception of it being in the back of a taxi on the side of a toll plaza.” Then City Room asked if the cab driver ever got paid, to which Kuncken replied, "I don’t know, but he’s going to need a cleaning service." And all the reporters guffawed, as flashbulbs popped in the smoke-filled press room.
