A Texas college student says he is trying to raise enough money to adopt a child he found lying on the ground while walking to a New Year's Eve gathering in Gonaives, Haiti in 2017.
Jimmy Amisial said that he walked over to an area where people were gathering and saw the boy lying in a "pile of trash" while crying, and no one was helping him.
Amisial said he brought the baby home to his mother, and they cared for his injuries, then called the authorities.
“When I got to the place where the people were making noise, I saw a baby,” said Amisial. The baby "was in a pile of trash crying, and there wasn’t a single soul who wanted to do anything about it.”
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He was visiting while on break from school at Texas State University.
Amisial told CNNhe believed the locals were afraid to pick the baby up because they feared he might be evil or cursed.
In a conversation with Amisial, he told Scripps he was 22-years-old at the time he found the boy, who was estimated to be about 3 to 4 months old at the time.
His mother in Haiti, Elicie Jean, helped to clean the boy and put ointment on his ant bites. Police asked the family to care for the boy overnight before a judge arrived the next day to see if they wanted to take temporary custody of him because there had been no one to come and claim him.
That was when Amisial took some days to think it over and decided to start the process of adopting the little boy he named Emilio Angel Jeremiah.
He left Emilio in the care of his mother while he returned to school in Texas as required by his student visa program.
In a Facebook post, Amisial asked for donations to help in the expensive process, providing a GoFundMe link, he wrote, "Your generosity and contributions will make a big difference in other people lives. Your donations will be used to hopefully get Emilio fully adopted. Pay for Emilio’s schooling, to support the local orphanages; needy families, kids in the community and possibly pay for my education and school debts. With you all that can be possible. I’m going to make sure of that to keep you guys updated."
He said, “I’ve always wanted to be a part of something great, and to me, that was the moment.”
Amisial told KXAN, “I’m really glad the fact that I had the opportunity to transform his life from being abandoned in the trash into a wonderful treasure."
Amisial told Scripps he is now 27, and Emilio will be turning five soon. Amisial took a break from school to work and raise money to fully adopt Emilio and says he will return to school to finish his communication studies.