A mother left her adorable tot alone in a stroller on a South Bronx street corner, where he was found by a kindhearted truck driver, who called cops and kept the boy calm until they arrived, police said.
“He must have been there for an hour,” driver Jason Alexander said.
The mom, Diana Paniagua, 29, of The Bronx was later arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and abandonment of a child. It was not known Monday night why she allegedly left the boy.
Alexander, 48, was making deliveries at the corner of East 141st Street and Rider Avenue at around 5:30 a.m. on Monday when he saw a woman pushing the boy in a blue stroller, police said.
“She didn’t seem all there,” the propane-company worker from Mastic, LI, added. “I was concerned about something happening to the baby.”
When Alexander finished unloading the fuel from his Bay Shore-based employer, Manhattan Propane, the woman had vanished but the boy was still there, according to police.
“I heard the crying,” Alexander said.
A father himself, Alexander knew exactly what to do: He picked the child up, rocked him and sang.
The little boy — just 26 pounds — stopped crying.
“He didn’t seem like he was used to that kind of treatment,” Alexander said.
EMS brought the tyke — believed to be about 2 years old — to Lincoln Hospital for evaluation.
A colleague of Alexander’s who wished to remain anonymous was not surprised he stopped to help and stayed until police and ambulance workers arrived.
“He’s a very kind man and a hard worker,” the co-worker said. “And he is a parent.”
The Administration for Children’s Services took the child into custody.