It was an ordinary Friday night in a criminal court in Brooklyn. Until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Around 11:30 p.m., a 33-year-old woman waiting to appear before a judge on low-level charges suddenly slouched on the bench where she was seated. The woman, Samantha Randazzo, was nine months pregnant and her water broke. Her baby was coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw it,\u201d her lawyer, Wynton Sharpe, said. \u201cShe didn\u2019t have to say anything. We were like, oh OK, this is happening, like, now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court officers sprang into action. Some rushed over to help Ms. Randazzo while their colleagues and the judge cleared the courtroom, Mr. Sharpe said. Suddenly, the courtroom had transformed into a labor and delivery unit.<\/p>\n
Minutes before midnight, the baby arrived. Ms. Randazzo delivered a \u201cbouncing baby boy,\u201d Mr. Sharpe said. He did not know if the newborn had been named.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a joyful and sad situation, given the circumstances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Babies in New York City have been known to arrive with no apparent regard for the circumstances. One baby girl, Zenovia Remy Legette, made her entrance on a discarded piece of furniture<\/a> outside her mother\u2019s apartment building in the Bronx, thwarting an attempt to reach the hospital. Last year, another baby girl nicknamed \u201cBaby W\u201d arrived on a moving subway train<\/a> in Manhattan, leading the police to her mother, who had been reported missing in Florida.<\/p>\n But no one The Times spoke to on Saturday could remember a case of a child being born in a city courtroom.<\/p>\n Justine Luongo, the chief attorney of the Legal Aid Society\u2019s criminal defense practice, said officials needed to explain why Ms. Randazzo was not given an alternative to arrest, why she was initially discharged from the hospital and why her case was not dismissed right away.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a horrific example of many, many system failures,\u201d she said, adding that Ms. Randazzo was the kind of person for whom \u201cwe should be thinking about services and treatment, and not incarceration and arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Randazzo was arrested on Thursday for drug possession and trespassing. The police said she was on the roof of her building in the Nostrand Houses, a public-housing complex in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood in Brooklyn, without authorization. When the arresting officers searched her, they found a small amount of heroin and cocaine, officials said.<\/p>\n A law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss the case without authorization said that Ms. Randazzo was ineligible for a desk-appearance ticket because she had an open arrest warrant. The ticket would have allowed her to be released from the police station and come to court at a later date.<\/p>\n After Ms. Randazzo\u2019s arrest, police officers took her to a hospital. She was discharged roughly 30 hours later. Then, officers took her to the criminal court in Brooklyn to be arraigned, or formally charged.<\/p>\n Mr. Sharpe said that doctors had not realized that Ms. Randazzo was so close to giving birth before she was released from the hospital. He praised the quick actions of the court officers, particularly Robert Winckler, who delivered the newborn and told Mr. Sharpe that he had been there for the birth of his own children. \u201cIt was clear,\u201d Mr. Sharpe said.<\/p>\n Al Baker, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said the officers\u2019 actions \u201cpersonified the everyday virtues of their sworn service.\u201d He added, \u201cWe are delighted both mother and baby are well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Fire Department said it received a call at 11:58 p.m. reporting that a \u201ccivilian gave birth\u201d at the criminal court in Brooklyn. An ambulance picked up Ms. Randazzo and her son about 10 minutes later and took them to the Brooklyn Hospital Center.<\/p>\n Ms. Randazzo\u2019s arraignment went forward without her. Mr. Sharpe said he expected her case to be dismissed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was an ordinary Friday night in a criminal court in Brooklyn. Until it wasn\u2019t. Around 11:30 p.m.,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[81976,18041,9,24,55,54,56,91777],"class_list":["post-234247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-babies-and-infants","tag-brooklyn-nyc","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-pregnancy-and-childbirth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}