VIDEO: Charlotte Officers Help Deliver Baby on Side of Gridlocked Interstate

A Charlotte mother is thanking a pair of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers who helped deliver her baby on the side of an interstate.

Taelor Johnson, 27, said she wasn’t due until May 15 but knew she needed to get to a hospital early Saturday after experiencing severe abdominal pain.

Johnson, her mother and her almost 4-year-old daughter piled into a car and started traveling north on Interstate 77. The family was about to take Exit 9 toward uptown when they were stopped by a line of traffic. There had been a crash on the interstate and other vehicles were at a standstill.

Johnson said she got out of the car because she wasn’t feeling well and realized her baby girl was making her arrival much faster than expected.

Her mother ran to two nearby officers helping direct traffic impacted by the crash, she said.

“We saw a lady across the road,” Officer Kevin Jackson told WSOC TV. “She was kind of frantic, waving her hands.”

Jackson, 23, who had only been on the job for five weeks, said he relied on training to ask Johnson certain questions, then he and fellow Officer Mike Caskey got ready to help deliver the baby.