West Philly child meets police officers who helped deliver her — 10 years later

When Kamille Young prepared for the arrival of her baby in 2013, a car was the last place she imagined as the delivery room. Little did she know that her 6-pound, 8-ounce baby girl, Aamanee Young, would be born in the back of a red Cadillac on Broad Street in North Philadelphia.

Former Temple University Police Officer Justin Busam and current Temple Officer Christopher DeRose still remember that Aug. 20 day. Derrick Reid, Aamanee’s father, ran in front of their parked patrol car. “My girlfriend is having a baby,” Busam recalls him saying. They initially pointed him to the closest hospital, Temple, before realizing the immediacy of the situation: The baby was coming right then and there.

Busam, a former paramedic, sent DeRose for towels and together they helped little Aamanee come into the world at 2:22 p.m.

Although Busam, now a captain with the Milmont Fire Company in Delaware County, and Kamille Young kept in touch with each other through Facebook over the years, Aamanee had never met the officers. That changed on Wednesday.

“You are so grown,” Busam told 10-year-old Aamanee during a meeting on Temple’s campus. Aamanee held on to two balloons, each tied to a letter of thanks she wrote to each officer.

As the grown-ups reminisced, Aamanee had one message for the officers. “If you weren’t there I don’t know what would happen, but since you were there it was a miracle,” she said.

Busam and DeRose have kept every newspaper clipping about their unusual duty that day. For DeRose, having assisted Young with the birth is a reminder that “there are blessings in everything that we do despite the hardships.”

Today, Aamanee, one of Kamille Young’s four children, is a happy child living in West Philadelphia with a passion for running track, math, and helping people. And, judging from her birth, perhaps a bit of a dramatic flair.

“She is the middle kid, but Aamanee knows how to make her presence felt,” her mother said.