Angela Marie Alexie, a 24-year-old homeless woman,was charged with giving birth to a baby boy, leaving him in an unheated uninsulated, wood-sided garage in Eastpointe, Michigan, where the baby died two days later.
Alexie, who has three other children (1, 2, and 4) all in foster care, was charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse. Alexie was convicted on the murder charge and now has been sentenced to life without parole:
A young Detroit-area woman who gave birth in a cold garage and left the baby to die apologized Tuesday before a judge ordered a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
The body was discovered at a recycling center in January 2015 after being placed in a bin at a curb in Eastpointe, a Detroit suburb. Police soon learned more: The baby boy was born in a garage weeks earlier, just before Christmas, and was left there to die from exposure while Angela Alexie was inside the house.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Alexie, 25, told a Macomb County judge. “I wish I could take it all back.”
At trial, her lawyer said involuntary manslaughter was a more appropriate charge, but a Macomb County jury disagreed and convicted Alexie of child abuse and murder committed during another felony.
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Outside court, county prosecutor Eric Smith said: “This case disgusts me.”
“She had plenty of options, plenty of alternatives,” he said. “No one leaves a newborn in a garage.”
Alexie gave birth by herself, according to the Detroit Free Press’ Christina Hall, on December 22, “left him there for the next couple of days, coming from the house every few hours to check on the newborn or to try to feed him, police said.
The temperatures dropped to the 20s and 30s on the nights of December 22-24.
“About 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, police said, the infant died of neglect and exposure,” Hall reported. “His mother, authorities charge, hid the body in the garage for several more weeks and finally put the dead child, wrapped only in a torn, black T-shirt, out at the curb in a plastic recycling bin, discarded with the trash.”
The baby’s body was discovered by horrified employees at the ReCommunity Recycling in Roseville on January 14, his umbilical cord still attached.
