Deputies Rescue Baby From Man Allegedly High on ‘Molly’

New Port Richey, FL — Two Pasco County deputies are being lauded as heroes after they wrestled a baby away from a man accused of walking on a busy roadway, high on Molly, with the child in his arms.

Deputies were alerted to the man’s strange behavior around 10 p.m. Sunday when a resident reported seeing a man carrying an infant along Little Road, near the intersection of Grove Drive, according to the sheriff’s office. The resident told authorities he was concerned for the infant’s safety after he witnessed the man acting erratically, the agency reported on Facebook.

Cpl. Ben Birge and Deputy John Gerardi responded to the area and had no trouble finding the man in question, the sheriff’s office said. The two deputies tried to speak with him, but he became agitated and confrontational while still holding the 6-month-old.

At that point, the man began acting paranoid, the sheriff’s office said. “He stated people were following him over drugs and declared he was not going to go anywhere with anyone,” the agency wrote.

As the man’s behavior became more erratic, the deputies became concerned he would run into the busy roadway with the child. When the man’s behavior escalated to nearly violent, Birge and Gerardi decided to act.

Birge grabbed hold of the infant with one arm while helping Geradi take the man to the ground. The man, however, “violently attempted to resist the deputies’ efforts to handcuff him after being forced to the ground,” the agency wrote. “Cpl. Birge was able to keep himself positioned between the infant and the suspect during the struggle to prevent any injury to the child.”

After the man was handcuffed, the deputies said he admitted to taking an unknown amount of “Molly.” The drug, also known as Ecstasy or MDMA, “is chemically similar to both stimulants and hallucinogens, producing feels of increased energy, pleasure, emotional warmth, and distorted sensory and time perception,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The man, identified as Roger Mumma, was charged with child neglect and resisting an officer with violence. He was being held in the Pasco County Jail Wednesday in lieu of $10,000 bond, jail records indicate.

The baby was turned over to family members, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Melanie Snow said. The relationship between the child and Mumma has not been released.

Photos courtesy of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office