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An infant girl died several hours after being found abandoned in a Northeast D.C. neighborhood early Monday morning, police say.

D.C. police say they received an anonymous call just after 11:30 p.m. Sunday night directing authorities to a home in the 3000 block of Channing Street NE in the Gateway neighborhood. There, police found an infant wrapped in a towel on the front step of a home.

Emannuel Dugger was walking home and found the baby abandoned on the steps in front of his neighbor's house. At first, he wasn't sure what it was.

"I noticed something wrapped up in a towel,” he says. "As I looked down I saw a leg hanging out.”

Dugger called 911 while his father tried to revive the baby. But it was too late.

"She had this beautiful coffee colored skin on her front, but where her back was in contact with the concrete it was green and bruised looking,” Eugene Dugger says.

After being transported to Children's National Medical Center the infant died at about 2:35 a.m. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed. Police are now searching for the person or people who abandoned the child.

A D.C. police special investigator says that the child appears to be only about one week old.

The people who reside in the home on Channing Street have no relation to the child found on their doorstep, authorities say.

The city does have a so-called "Safe Haven" law where a person can drop off a child at a safe place such as a hospital or firehouse if they are unable to care for the child.

The baby was found on Ian Milne's front steps.

"It's such a bizarre place for a child to be put. there are so many places you can drop off a child, even if it's unwanted," he says.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.