His Girlfriend Is in Labor. While Driving Her to the Hospital, He's Arrested. But Here's Why He Missed the Birth of His Son.

It has all the makings of quite the tearjerker.

A teenage guy's pregnant girlfriend goes into labor. While driving her to the hospital, he flags down a cop for an escort. The cop says no, then cuffs him for driving with a suspended license and an outstanding warrant. She's taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and he misses witnessing his son being born — because he's sitting in the slammer.

Image source: KDKA-TV

"He took him to jail — and it was his first child," Michelle Kitchens, the baby’s maternal grandmother, told KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh after the Monday incident.

“I cried through my whole birth,” new mom Shayla Crews added.

But according to Pleasant Hills (Pa.) police, that's not exactly how things went down.

Deputy Chief Sean Greene told TheBlaze that while Maceo Saunders, 18, did indeed flag down an officer for help, that occurred after the officer observed Saunders' vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed with its hazard lights flashing at 1:15 a.m. Monday.

"That sticks out like a sore thumb," Greene told TheBlaze, adding that the officer directed Saunders to pull over.

Image source: KDKA-TV

Greene said the officer then ran a computer check and discovered Saunders had a suspended license and was wanted on an aggravated assault warrant.

Court records show that police in Washington, Pa., — about 30 miles southwest of Pleasant Hills — charged Saunders with aggravated assault, simple assault and conspiracy after Saunders allegedly attacked two men and a woman with a pool cue just after midnight last Aug. 23, according to the Observer-Reporter.

One of Saunders' alleged victims suffered a broken vertebrae, an affidavit notes.

So when Pleasant Hills police encountered Saunders in the wee hours Monday and learned of the blips on his record, he was arrested, held overnight in Allegheny County Jail, then transferred to Washington County on his outstanding warrant, a court official told the Observer-Reporter.

Saunders was released on $5,000 bond set Tuesday, and then he finally got the hospital to meet his newborn son — "little Maceo Jr.," Crews told KDKA on camera.

Not that it sat well at the time with the new mother when they were trying to get to the hospital: “I was like, 'I’ll drive cause I have a license.' I said, 'I don’t care. I want him there!'”

KDKA, which reported Saunders' age as 19 (police said he's 18), said that when Saunders attempted to follow the ambulance to the hospital, police pulled him over and arrested him. Saunders told KDKA he didn’t know his aggravated assault warrant was active because he said he was recently released from a juvenile facility and told that he was free to go.

In addition, KDKA reported that the family said Jefferson Hills police made the arrest — it was Pleasant Hills police.