‘I had to get that baby out of there,’ says man who found child left in container

NEW HAVEN — Perry Dennis said he didn’t hear or see the baby at first.

But as he walked away from a dumpster in the 500 block of Dixwell Avenue, he heard a noise.

“I walked maybe a good five beats or so and then I heard a baby crying, I thought it was a cat at first,” he said.

Although police and media reported Dennis is a construction or maintenance worker, he said he was only throwing away his trash from his nearby home at the time of the discovery of the 8-month-old baby girl.

Dennis said he didn’t see or hear the baby in the otherwise empty dumpster when he threw away his trash, but once the heavy lid to the dumpster slammed shut, the baby began to wail. When he discovered the baby, he said he immediately called 911.

“I tried to get the baby out of there, then I saw one of the maintenance workers and asked him to help me,” he said.

He said the baby was shivering, so he ran back to his apartment to grab a blanket to cover her.

“It just shocked me,” he said.

“I had to get that baby out of there,” he said. “She was shivering and crying. I immediately saw the hands. Both hands were burnt, but the right hand especially.”

The injured baby girl was found injured but alive in a dumpster outside of the Presidential Gardens apartment complex on Dixwell Avenue.

Police said officers responded to the complex around 2 p.m. after receiving reports that the baby was found. She was found with burns on her hands.

Rick Chardon, a maintenance technician at Presidential Gardens, said Monday the baby had been found by a tenant, who then turned the child over to staff.

A woman who is believed to be the child’s babysitter is charged with allegedly abandoning the baby girl in the dumpster.

Andiana Velez, 24, is charged with risk of injury to a child, second-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment, according to Capt. Anthony Duff.

In addition to allegedly abandoning the child, who remains hospitalized after suffering burns to her hands, Velez is also charged with assaulting the girl’s mother earlier in the day, Duff said. Velez was arraigned Tuesday and was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

He said that around 11:45 a.m. Tuesday he threw away the blanket he used to wrap the baby.

Dennis said he has two children of his own in their 30s and seven grandchildren — five are girls.

“I can just see the baby’s face. I just had to get that baby out of here. It’s crazy,” he said. “It’s still in my mind how somebody can do something like that.”“I left yesterday after talking with the police and I just wanted to forget about what I just saw. I left and hung out with friends and just sat there. I didn’t even mention it to them, but they knew. I’m not sure how it got out,” he said.