In a bizarre case of infanticide or concealing the death of a newborn baby, a 16-year-old girl who apparently hid her pregnancy from her parents and gave birth without their knowledge buried her full-term baby, who weighed 8.5 pounds, in her back yard.
The newborn’s body was found buried in her mother’s yard on June 30 and police were tipped off by someone who overheard a conversation about a dead newborn. Authorities believe the teen had the baby at home and then buried the body in the yard and they say the baby died from blood loss after someone cut the umbilical cord to close to the newborn girl’s body.
Police don’t believe the teen’s parents knew about the pregnancy.
The state medical examiner’s office determined that the baby died of blood loss after it appears whomever cut the umbilical cord cut it too close to the baby girl.
The newborn then appears to have bled out, Sheriff Jones told the Charlotte Observer.
‘I agree it could have been an accident,’ Jones said, ‘but … she had ample time to do some type of planning to prevent this – plan a way to give the child up, to keep this from happening.’
Here is more from the report:
The district attorney’s office “is studying some case history. They are now in direct contact with the medical examiner’s office,” Jones said. “Nothing has come together as quick as we thought it was.”
The district attorney’s office may be waiting for a final medical examiner’s report, he said.
District Attorney Sam Currin wasn’t available for comment Friday.
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Sheriff’s deputies discovered the newborn girl buried in a bag on a Sunday night, according to Jones. A person who had heard “third-hand” about the baby’s birth alerted Louisburg police about 7:30 p.m. that day, Jones said. The person told police he had heard that an acquaintance had received a text message about a concealed birth, according to Jones.
“He said, ‘If I don’t tell somebody, I can’t live with myself,’ ” Jones said.
The police contacted sheriff’s deputies, who followed the tip to a home in a subdivision, where they’d been told they might find a teenager who had given birth recently. Deputies didn’t find the 16-year-old girl, and her father told them it seemed to be a “sick prank,” Jones said. The deputies left the house and asked a series of other people about the case over the next several hours.
At 10 p.m., the teen’s father called deputies.
