After 26 years in law enforcement, Deputy Robert Pounds thought he had seen everything.
He was wrong.
On Tuesday, Pounds helped deliver a baby girl on the side of the road in Naples, Florida.
"I laid the blanket down and it wasn't too long after that I was holding a newborn baby in my hands,'' he told TODAY Friday. "I guess you could say it was just my training that kicked in. The baby did most of the work, we'll put it that way."
The excitement began at approximately 4 a.m. when Pounds pulled over a car that was going 63 miles-per-hour in a 45 mph zone.
A man named Wilfrid Jean-Louis was behind the wheel, and his pregnant wife, Fabienne Gorges, 35, was screaming in the passenger seat.
“Officer, you have the right to stop me, I’m not gonna even lie,” Jean-Louis, 36, can be heard telling Pounds in dash-cam footage. “We have a baby coming out. That’s the reason why I’m speeding.”
At first, Pounds thought it was just an act. Then, he saw the head crowning.
"I had to scream out for help because I was in shock," Jean-Louis told TODAY. "I didn't know what was gonna happen."
In the video, Pounds proceeds to call for backup and then returns to his patrol vehicle to grab latex gloves and a sterile blanket.
“I’m coming bud, hang on!” Pounds assures Jean-Louis.
Moments later, Pounds, a father of three, delivers his first baby.
"(The baby) gripped my forefinger, which really made me feel good because it was a nice tight squeeze and I knew she was going to be OK,'' Pounds said.
The couple made sure there will always be a permanent reminder of her memorable birth. They named their healthy baby girl Leila Robert Jean-Louis in honor of Pounds.
"It was only right,'' Wilfrid Jean-Louis noted. "It was only fair. He was there, and he did what I wasn't able to do."
Throughout the ordeal, Pounds appears remarkably calm.
"Even though I looked calm, I was probably a little more scared on the inside than I appeared,'' he said. "But my training and my agency's training really helped me out quite a bit."
Though Jean Louis' car could probably use a good scrub, his driving record is clean.
"Everybody's afraid to get pulled over,'' he said on TODAY. "But this time I was happy."
As Pounds wrote in the police report, “Due to the nature of the circumstances, Jean-Louis was not given any citations, and he left shortly after the ambulance left with his wife and new daughter.”