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Conn. state trooper helps deliver baby on Christmas Eve

It wasn't Santa who helped with a special delivery in Connecticut on Christmas Eve, but a state police trooper.

Police lights at night (generic image)

It wasn’t Santa who helped with a special delivery in Connecticut on Christmas Eve, but a state police trooper.

Trooper First Class Greg Capps helped deliver a baby on Saturday morning after an expectant mother was unable to make it to the hospital.

Capps said he sitting in his patrol car after responding to an emergency, when he got a call from dispatch that a woman in a minivan that had just passed his patrol car was going into labor.

"I pulled up and the guy [driving] was so distraught," Capps said. "It was pouring, so I got out of the car and the baby was crowning."

Capps, who is an EMT, ran back to his car for gloves and then talked the woman through the birth.

"She pushed and the baby crowned out," he said. "The cord was wrapped around his neck, but loose so I was able to get it slack and one shoulder and he shot out after that."

An ambulance arrived shortly after the birth and they clamped the baby's cord and got the mother Itohan Oyabure-Okafur into the ambulance.

Capps said the baby began breathing on his own and is doing well at the hospital.

St. Francis spokeswoman Fiona Phelan told the Hartford Courant that Oyabure-Okafur named the baby boy Ebenezer Okafur.

He's 6-pound, 2-ounces, according to the Courant.

Capps said Ebenezer is Oyabure-Okafur's second child and wasn't due until the 29th, which oddly enough is his middle son's birthday.

"I just happened to be there," he said. "If i hadn't been close by those two would have delivered the baby on their own."

Connecticut State Police tweeted about the incident shortly after it happened.

“Santa....we mean Troopers make early delivery! Troopers deliver baby boy Rte 2 wb x7. All are happy & healthy. Congrats to the new parents," the tweet said.

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