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A police officer heard wailing as he approached the house in a farming community near Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was freezing cold in the predawn darkness of 6:10 a.m. on Feb. 1, and Alexis Cooley was “hysterical,” the officer wrote later. He followed her into the house.
To Alexis, nothing felt real in that moment. It was like her eyes were a video screen playing a movie. More officers and sheriff’s deputies arrived. An ambulance pulled up. When Alexis called 911 minutes before, she’d said between sobs and frantic pleas for help that the baby wasn’t breathing and his body was cold. Medics performed CPR on her newborn son’s 12-pound body, though it was futile.
Still, the medics asked: Would you like us to take him to the hospital? Yes, save my baby, Alexis remembers saying, and soon she was in her husband Diamond’s pickup truck, following the ambulance to the hospital.