Dad facing charges after good Samaritan saves baby from hot car


A baby left in a car outside a Georgia courthouse on Monday was transferred to her grandmother's custody after her father  was pulled out of a courthouse and arrested for child cruelty.

The baby was taken from the car by a woman who saw the child's father leave her there.

“I’ve been in my car for the last five minutes and I’m perspiring and my body is overheated, so you can imagine how hot it was for the 3-month-old child who was left in this car,” said Phoebe Fletcher, the woman who removed the baby from the car.

"The doors were locked, so I kind of got one of the windows down and I just took her; took her, the diaper bag,” Fletcher said. “Soon as I got her, she was smiling."

Fletcher said the girl's father, 37-year-old Courtney Kidd, apparently thought court staff told him babies aren't allowed in the courthouse.

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Courthouse sources told WSB-TV the father tried to take the baby through security but was told to take the baby out of her car seat and send the car seat through the scanner. Kidd turned around and left. Fletcher said she saw Kidd as he was leaving.

“He said, ‘I didn't know we couldn't bring babies in,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said she tried to tell him that wasn’t true.

She said she watched as Kidd took the baby to the car, cracked the windows, locked the doors and went to court. Soon after, she unlocked the door and took the baby inside.

When deputies got Kidd out of court, he tried to go to his daughter, but deputies wouldn't let him.

Fletcher said she did what she hopes anyone would do.

“I have a daughter and I would never leave my baby in the car and I wouldn't leave anybody else's either,” she said.

Besides the child cruelty charges he faces, Kidd also has a long rap sheet and is on probation

(Source: WSB-TV)