An ex-con from Georgia is being hailed as a hero after he saved a 15-month-old little girl, who was crawling on the side of a highway.

Bryant Collins, an auto repairman, said that he noticed the baby at around 10:00 a.m. on Friday.

“I had seen something out of the corner of my eye, and I thought it was a baby,” Bryant explained. “I just stopped and, when I got out, there was a baby … almost in the highway.”

“What the hell is going on?” Collins said he thought to himself. “A baby?” Bryant immediately scooped the little girl up and put her in his vehicle. He called 911 and had to wait two hours for the authorities to arrive. During that time, the baby started crying and Bryant soothed her the only way he knew how … with gospel music. “I know Gospel music calms me down,” he said.

Madison County Sheriff Kip Thomas said the girl had been left in the care of her older siblings when she crawled nearly 300 yards through the woods, fell down an embankment, and then made her way to the highway, where she could have easily been run over.

Bryant says he is just glad that the baby was okay, and that he was getting positive attention rather than negative. Bryant served 10 years in federal prison for manufacturing cocaine. However, he said that he has been clean for five years and is glad that he could do something good for society.

“I did 10 years in the federal institution for manufacturing cocaine,” he said. “When I was in prison, I made a very conscientious effort to change, and I did. It made me feel good, that I could be in society and do good.”

Image via Wikimedia Commons