KRON – WARNING: THE VIDEO MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS. SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE TO SEE THE FULL VIDEO
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A disturbing video shows a homeless woman giving birth at a bus stop in San Francisco.
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Most of the people there just stood by and watched it happen, and homeless advocates are very concerned. KRON has edited the video because it is extremely graphic.
There was shock and confusion as a homeless woman stands dazed just after delivering a baby — a bloody and traumatic birth.
"I look up, and I see there, like a baby, under a bus stop laying in blood," said witness Eduardo, who only gave KRON his first name.
Eduardo, who did not want to go on camera, said he was walking with his friend, who took the video, at Sixth and Market streets at 1:30 p.m. Monday. The birth happened at the 5 and 21 Muni stop, where now a cardboard box covers the stains on the sidewalk.
"I just didn't want to believe it, it's just shocking," Eduardo said.
On the ground, the newborn briefly cries and kicks. People realize the urgency and then rush to help.
"She made nothing. She didn't make any sounds," said Aaryon Comini, who DJs at the Crazy Horse, a club next to the Muni stop. "She looked nothing but surprised."
Comini said he watched everything, including a bike messenger who took the shirt off his back to keep the baby warm, possibly saving the baby's life.
"When he saw what happened, jumped off, grabbed the baby, wrapped it up in his shirt," Comini said. "We offered him a shirt. Offered…clean up. He came to use our bathroom. Was tripping, said ‘I've had two babies. I could do another one'"
The San Francisco Fire Department took the baby and mom away in an ambulance to SF General Hospital.
The fire department said the woman, who possibly suffers from mental illness, did not know she was pregnant. The little boy was born premature at 32 weeks.
KRON showed the unedited video to Jennifer Friedenbach with the Coalition on Homelessness.
"In my experience, that she's probably very heavily traumatized," Friedenbach said.
Friedenbach told KRON the woman in the video is not someone she knew, and this is a sad reality to see happening on San Francisco streets.
"And that I think is the biggest tragedy of this," Friedenbach said. "Had her social economic situation been different, the outcome of what is the most beautiful moment in a woman's life would have been very, very different."
The mom has been released from the hospital, and the baby is doing OK.