Woman delivers twins in parking lot

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A woman delivered twins in the parking lot at a gas station convenience store as one customer taped the event for the family and others helped bundle up the babies.

Nicole Williams went into labour Tuesday morning. Williams and her husband, Scott Cannon, rushed to drop their three children off at her mother’s apartment.

As they started the drive to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, where her obstetrician was waiting to deliver their twin girls, they got stuck in traffic on Interstate 275. When Williams realized they weren’t going to make it, she told her husband to get off the highway.

He headed for a RaceTrac gas station and convenience store.

“When he was pulling in, I told him … ‘Oh my God. Here she comes,”’ Williams said.

Store manager Vince DeRosa said he looked up and saw Cannon burst through the door.

“Guy comes in screaming, ‘Call 911. My wife is having a baby,”’ DeRosa said. “Then he screams out we need to get an ambulance in a hurry because another one was on its way.”

A female customer wrapped Williams and her newborn daughter in a bed skirt. At least three men took off their shirts to provide more bedding. Another woman held the family’s video recorder.

A paramedic helped Williams deliver her second daughter at the gas station, with Williams still in the front passenger seat.

Speaking from her bed at Bayfront Medical Centre, where she and both babies were doing fine, Williams was grateful for the help.

But, she said, “We would have been better off staying at home.”