When Dr. Ozgur Harmanli reached the emergency room, surgeons already had the young woman's chest open and were frantically massaging her heart.
Doctors inserted tubes and pumped fluids into her body, trying to keep up her blood pressure.
It wasn't working.
Kim Armstrong, 24, of North Philadelphia, six months pregnant with her fourth child, was slipping away, mortally injured by a runaway car that had crushed her against a chain-link fence.
Nobody around the gurney wanted to lose the baby, too.
Harmanli, a fourth-year resident at Temple University Hospital, grabbed a scalpel, cutting open the woman's abdomen to perform an emergency Caesarean section. He got the baby out in seconds, granting the child life even as its mother's ebbed.
The baby - a 1-pound, 4-ounce boy whom the family has named Kevin - was in critical but stable condition last night at Temple University Hospital, breathing with the help of a respirator. Hospital authorities said the baby had a 75 percent chance of survival.
Philadelphia police said that at 11:55 a.m. yesterday Armstrong and her son Aaron Johnson, 3, were walking in the 1100 block of Somerset Street near their home in the 1300 block of Auburn Street, several blocks away. At the same time, a 1983 Chevrolet driven by Paul Ward, 34, of the 2000 block of Gerritt Street in South Philadelphia, was racing west on Somerset.
The car sped through the stop sign at 11th Street, went over the southwest curb and struck the steps of an empty corner store. It swerved back into the street, traveling a half-block west to Marvine Street, where it mounted the sidewalk on the northwest corner, ran over a sign pole and hit Armstrong and her son, police said.
She was smashed against a fence, and her son was jammed under the car.
Last night, police charged Ward with murder, homicide by vehicle, driving under the influence of drugs, aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person. Police investigators said they recovered cocaine and syringes inside the car.
One witness, Paul Young, said he was standing on Marvine Street near the
intersection when he heard the car ram the sign pole.
"I thought it was just a car accident," Young said. "Then I looked down and I saw two people. One adult and one child. He was smack dab underneath. The lady was wedged against the gate and half her body was under the car."
Neighborhood resident Wilamae Warner began screaming, "There's a baby under that car."
