This woman screaming in a gas station parking lot wasn't in trouble

SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — Police responding to a 911 call of a female screaming discovered a pregnant woman in a gas parking lot moments away from giving birth.

Within minutes, the woman and her seemingly healthy baby were bonding in an ambulance. 

Officer Malynda Garcia and Cpl. Jeffrey Shubert of the Shippensburg Police Department had no idea what they would find before they arrived at a Sunoco station here at about 1:30 a.m. ET Monday. The dispatcher was not even able to get a location from the woman when she called, so they had to electronically determine where the call came from. 

Garcia and Shubert found the woman alone, outside a vehicle and immediately realized what was happening, Garcia said. Her water already had broken, and the baby's head was visible. 

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The officers lay the 44-year-old woman on the ground.

"I put my jacket under her head to give her some comfort," Garcia said. 

Shubert previously had worked as an emergency medical technician, so he took the lead and Garcia focused on comforting the soon-to-be mother, whose name was not released.  A mother of two herself, Garcia knew what the woman was going through. 

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An ambulance arrived in time for the last push, and the baby was born. 

The owner of the gas station, Maliha Sharifi, said the business’s surveillance cameras caught the whole thing.

A clerk on duty at the time initially thought a gas delivery was coming, then a customer came in and said someone was having a baby in the parking lot. Sharifi said she is glad “such a nice story” happened at her gas station since gas stations are sometimes in the news for less positive reasons.

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The experience was amazing, Garcia said. The officer was worried because she had never been involved in such a situation before except for her own pregnancies but said it helped that Shubert was calm and cool about it. 

Police have not been able to follow up with the new mother.

Follow Amber South on Twitter: @AESouthPO