A 25-year-old Florida woman who had been missing for months was found on Wednesday under dramatic circumstances, after she gave birth on a subway train rumbling beneath the streets of Manhattan.
The woman, Jenny Saint Pierre of Hallandale Beach, Fla., had been reported missing by her family, who said they had not seen her since last summer. On Wednesday, a law enforcement official identified her as the woman who gave birth on a southbound W train in Midtown shortly before noon.
A police spokesman said the mother and the baby, a girl, had been brought to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Ms. Saint Pierre’s sister, Stephania Saint Pierre, confirmed the mother’s identity after seeing a video of the newborn’s first moments that was shared on social media on Wednesday.
“Oh, my God, look at her little face!” Stephania said in a phone interview from her home in Texas as she watched the video. She recognized her sister’s pink duffle bag on a subway seat and heard her voice as another passenger lifted the infant. “Oh, my God, I am going to cry! That’s my first niece!”
Stephania was surprised to learn that her sister was in New York City and said she did not know why she had gone there.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said that passengers on the train alerted the conductor to the birth around 11:32 a.m. while the train was stopped at the 34th Street-Herald Square station. The conductor held the train in the station, and police officers and emergency medical workers soon arrived.
Demetrius Crichlow, the president of New York City Transit, called the baby “Baby W” in the statement. He said the circumstances of her birth demonstrated New Yorkers’ goodness.
“This is another example of New Yorkers coming together to help each other, assisted by caring transit workers and other responders, reflecting the best of the subway community and this city,” he said. “We are thrilled that both mother and Baby W are doing well, and look forward to welcoming both of them back aboard for a lifetime of reliable — and hopefully less dramatic — rides.”
The video, posted on TikTok by a bystander, shows Ms. Saint Pierre lying on the floor of the subway car immediately after the birth. A fellow rider can be seen holding the squirming newborn aloft, wrapped in a red cloth. Other riders mill about, seemingly unsure of what to do. One woman stands bent over nearby, ready to assist, her purse dangling from her wrist.
“You’re headed to work and you witness someone giving birth on the train,” reads the caption of the video. “Only in NYC!” The person who posted the video did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since the New York City subway began operation in 1904, babies have been born on trains or station platforms from time to time, according to archival news media reports stretching back almost 100 years.
Many of the mothers have been homeless women who spent long periods of time on the subways. Others have been just passing through, including a woman named Catherine O’Brien, who according to The New York Times was “employed as a domestic” when she gave birth to a son at the Avenue U Station in Brooklyn in 1937. In 1993, another woman gave birth to a daughter on the No. 3 train while on her way to an obstetrician’s appointment.
On Wednesday, Stephania Saint Pierre said she had a vivid dream the night before that her sister had given birth. When she woke up she immediately called two hospitals in Miami, but Jenny was at neither one.
Then, nearly 12 hours later, Stephania saw the video of her sister and her new niece on the subway.
“I dreamed it just this morning. And here she is, giving birth to a baby on a train,” she said. “I felt it, I knew it.”
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