Good Samaritan who jumped out of her car on I-95 to save a baby is a hero
In a summer of bad news, it was refreshing to hear a story about a woman who was courageous enough to do the right thing.
I’m so sick of bad news.
I know you are, too.
Well, here’s some good news for a change. It’s about a woman who was on her way to work recently and saw something that didn’t look right on I-95. Instead of chasing clout by videotaping what was going on the way some motorists did, she pulled her car over and got involved.
Her name is Christine King, and she’s a hero.
On Thursday, July 28, King had been in slow-moving traffic heading south near the Cottman Avenue exit, enjoying her gospel music, when she noticed a man and a woman engaged in a scuffle. At first, she assumed they had been in an automobile accident. Then she noticed that the man was holding a baby over an overpass as if to drop her.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, there’s a baby,’” King told me when we spoke by phone last Monday. She pulled over and jumped out.
King, a 52-year-old mother of five who lives in Bensalem, parked her Honda, raced over to the couple, and demanded that the man hand over the toddler.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, please give me the baby. Don’t do this! Don’t do this,’” she said. “And then he looked in my face and looked right in my eyes. He said, ‘Get away from my baby. Get your hands off of my baby.’ I said, ‘Let the baby go.’ He said, ‘Get your hands off of my baby. If you don’t get your hands off my baby — I have a gun — I will shoot you.’”
King retreated a few steps but didn’t leave. Once again, she demanded that the baby be handed over. She was shaking by then but held her ground.
“By that time, the traffic is not moving. The traffic has stopped. And when he said, ‘I will shoot you,’ I turned around and I looked into the traffic to see if anybody else was coming,” she recalled. One passerby did stop and used his phone to call police.
At one point during the struggle, the mother reached over and snatched the man’s gun out of his pocket, King said. Soon the police arrived with their sirens flashing.
“And I said, ‘Give them the baby. They are going to shoot you!’” King said. “It took a lot for people to get him into the police cruiser because he’s a big guy ... He was screaming, ‘Do you see what you did?’”
When it was finally over, King went back to her car and retrieved water and crackers for the baby, and waited with the mother until a relative arrived to pick her up.
“She was just shaking. She couldn’t even talk to anybody,” King said.
Raheem Murphy, 35, is being held on $1.5 million bond and faces multiple charges including aggravated assault, kidnapping, and endangering the welfare of a child. A Pennsylvania state trooper suffered injuries during the incident.
Before they parted, King got the mother’s number and promised to remember her in prayer. Since then, they have spoken a few times. (Through King, the mother declined to be interviewed.)
I imagine that this mother probably considers King her guardian angel because of the way she came running and stayed until it was over.
What I want to know is: Where was everybody else? I know people have become desensitized lately, but a baby’s life was literally hanging in the balance.
“Who was this brave woman? What made her get involved like that?”
I first learned about the incident on social media. I watched a video taken from a passing car — which means that someone took the time to video what was happening and post it to social media, but not to help. The video was horrific — a mother’s screams of anguish, a man with a baby in one arm, and a Philadelphia police officer with a gun pointed. Later, I saw the TV news reports, which included interviews with King, and wondered: Who was this brave woman? What made her get involved like that?
King, who attends United Methodist Church of the Good Shepherd in Philadelphia, is convinced her actions were divinely inspired. “God put me in the right place at the right time,” she said. King is originally from Liberia, and an aunt told her that she got her bravery from her late mother, who had saved numerous people during a civil war.
King had been on her way to her job as a paid caregiver for a woman in Bridesburg when she saw something on I-95 that didn’t look right. But she didn’t pick up a cell phone to videotape. She didn’t just sit there rubbernecking. Instead, without worrying about her own safety, she ran to help.
We need more heroes like King, who care more about protecting others than garnering social media likes.