When West Virginia police got a call about something odd going on in a Kroger grocery store bathroom, they assumed it would be just another routine response.
But when they got there and heard the noises coming from the restroom stall, one cop came out of it much different than when he entered.
Employees at a Kroger grocery store near Charleston alerted St. Albans Police to a woman who had gone into the restroom and hadn’t come out in some time. With it being the early morning hours on Monday, the store wasn’t as busy as other times of the day.
Nobody had tried to use the restroom since the woman, who wasn’t alone, went in and hadn’t come out. Kroger employees didn’t even dare go in there, so they called police when the noise started coming out of the bathroom and the sounds didn’t stop.
Seargent Phillip Bass was first to arrive on the scene and was met with workers at the store entrance. He is used to encountering strange things in the line of duty, but he was completely shocked when he found a crazy scene in the women’s bathroom of a Kroger store.
“One of the employees came out and said ‘Hey we’ve got a problem inside. We have a lady, she’s been in the bathroom about 20 minutes, she has a baby with her, she could hear her screaming at the baby,” Seargent Bass told WOWK. But that still didn’t prepare him for what he found when he bravely went inside.
Alone in the bathroom with a 14-month-old baby was 39-year-old Donnyell Harrison, who was supposed to be babysitting the little girl, but she had other pressing matters to attend to instead. She was trying to hide illicit drugs from the police.
The baby, whom she was looking after for a family friend, was sucking on a bottle filled with nothing but Dr. Pepper. It was clear that Harrison had been loading herself up on drugs, and the baby was upset and crying for attention, after not being cared for, but Seargent Bass left everyone in shock with what he did next.
Seargent Phillip Bass was disgusted when he saw the baby drinking soda instead of formula. When he asked why the infant didn’t have any real food, Donnyell Harrison claimed that she didn’t have anything else to give the hungry baby. However, he didn’t buy that excuse, especially since they were in a grocery store.
The Journal-News reports that Harrison was arrested for drug possession with the intent to distribute and now joins the baby’s mom in the South Central Regional Jail. The baby girl’s mom was already incarcerated for reasons not indicated, which is why her child was in Harrison’s care.
Now, with nobody to watch after the baby and Child Protective Services not being readily available, Seargent Phillip Bass stepped up to the plate to take care of this child as one of his own. He left the restroom with the baby cradled in his arms.
CPS couldn’t take the child until later the next day, so Seargent Bass stayed up all night comforting, rocking, and feeding this abandoned little girl, who had lived a hard first year of her life. With the help of other caring cops at the department, the team all pitched in to buy the baby what she needed, including a few toys, diapers, and food.
What Seargent Bass and the other cops at the St. Albans Police Department did for that child, in one night, was probably more than this little girl has ever received in her whole 14-months of living. Her mother didn’t care enough for her to put her child’s needs before her crimes, and then she tossed her off into the care of a drugged out degenerate. Officer Bass saw her needs as a father and a cop, and he did what needed to be done and then some.
