Photo of Officer Holding Baby Goes Viral

WTXF - A photo of a West Virginia police officer holding a baby has taken the Internet by storm this week.

According to a press release from the St. Albans Police Department, Sgt. Philip Bass took a call reporting shoplifting at a local Kroger store. Once he arrived, Sgt. Bass heard a baby crying- and noticed a 14-month-girl being held by a woman in the store's bathroom. The baby's mother, the department said, was incarcerated and had passed the baby on to a relative, who in turn passed her to the woman in the store.

As the baby was left in the police department's custody overnight, Bass, a father of three, was left to hold the baby, in the picture that soon found its way around the world. Child Protective Services arrived the next morning.