News

Following Turnpike accident, N.J. State Trooper saves 3-month-old girl

Published April 24, 2011

CARTERET — Three-month-old Denisse Cintron is alive thanks to the efforts of a state trooper on the New Jersey Turnpike in Carteret this morning.

The infant was not breathing and beginning to turn blue when she was pulled from an overturned Toyota Thunder at the Exit 12 toll booth by Trooper Ryan Kauffmann, state police said.

The infant’s mother, Denisse Delucca-Moncayo, 29, of Carteret, was approaching the toll booth at 9:15 a.m. when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed into the concrete barrier dividing the tolls, said Sgt. Stephen Jones.

Kauffmann said he arrived on the scene and pulled the baby from the center console area. Kauffmann and a trucker, who had stopped because of the accident, began performing CPR.

The baby appeared to be choking on her tongue and the two men struggled to clear an airway.

“You’re not really thinking,” Kauffmann said. “It’s just cruise-control.”

The two set up an automated external defibrillator and performed CPR for about 10 minutes, Kauffmann said, before a pulse was detected.

Cintron, her mother and her grandmother, who was also in the vehicle, were taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. The other two women sustain non-life threatening injuries.

Cintron is in the natal intensive care unit but has a strong pulse, Kauffmann said.

“We deal with that kind of stuff day in and day out,” Kauffmann said. “It’s just a job.”

Dan Goldberg/The Star-Ledger