'Miracle baby': 1-year-old survives 2 days on side of highway after mom abandoned him
After surviving two days alone enduring wind and rain from Hurricane Beryl, a 1-year-old baby was rescued when a truck driver on I-10 East near the Texas-Louisiana border saw the child crawling towards the highway a few miles from where his older brother's body was found.
"We looked at this 1-year-old as our miracle baby because he was still alive," Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Stitch Guillory said during a news conference earlier this month, according to KPLC-TV.
"This kid spent two days out in the weather on the side of the highway. Thank God that trucker saw him. When you look at the video here, he was, you know, crawling toward the highway."
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The infant, Kingtrail Jack, was discovered just miles from where the body of his 4-year-old brother, Legend Jack, was discovered behind the Louisiana Welcome Center in Vinton on July 9. Both children were last seen with their mother, Aaliyah N. Jack.
The 25-year-old mother has been accused of killing one child and abandoning another along the interstate. She was arrested after being found at a train station in Mississippi hundreds of miles away. She was initially held in a Mississippi jail cell before being extradited to Louisiana last week, where she faces one count of second-degree murder, two counts of failure to report a missing child and one count of cruelty to a juvenile.
The mother was booked into Calcasieu Correctional Center on Saturday. While she was being transported, Jack told camera crews with KPLC that she was unsure why she left her children on the interstate and said she was under the influence of drugs at the time. She admitted to killing her son.
Kingtrail Jack was released from the hospital on July 10 and is in state custody.
The children's paternal grandmother, Dion Polk, who was largely responsible for caring for Legend, could be seen crying in an interview with KPLC. She called the incident "a nightmare."
Conswella Jack, the maternal grandmother of the two boys who lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, told The Acadiana Advocate she had been helping Aaliyah Jack by providing her with money and is confused about why her daughter hurt her grandchildren.
"I was so blessed to hear the baby survived, but also so hurt because one is now gone," Conswella Jack said. "Now I have to fight for my grandson."
"It's stressful because they're going to put me through all what I'm about to go through just to get him back. I don't even have the funds for it, so I have to do everything I can to get that baby back, because ain't nobody know him like we know him."
Conswella Jack said she tried contacting her daughter but was unsuccessful in getting any useful information about the location.
"The next day, which was Sunday, after trying to call her, she finally reaches out to me, but it's a text," she said. "She sent me a picture of a car in some bushes that kind of looked like it was wrecked. I was confused, so I called, called, and called, and could not reach her."
Nicole VanDyke is a reporter for The Christian Post.
