A teen girl has been arrested following 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.’
Now, according to a news report, she has been arrested.
A 16-year-old girl has been arrested for burying her newborn daughter’s body in her family’s backyard after keeping the pregnancy a secret from her parents.
Ashley Marie Reed, from Louisburg, North Carolina, handed herself in to sheriff’s deputies in Franklin County on Tuesday and was charged with concealing and failure to report a death.
The charges are the lowest class of felony, which means the teen, who has no prior criminal record, could serve between three and eight months of community service if she is convicted, the Associated Press reported.
Reed’s 18-year-old boyfriend, Aaron Davis, had urged her to tell someone about the pregnancy but she was too scared and hid her bump beneath large shirts, he claimed.
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She was full term when she gave birth to the 8.5lb baby in June. When she tried to cut her umbilical cord, she cut it too close to the baby’s body, likely causing her to bleed to death, authorities said.
She wrapped the baby, whom she had named Emma, in a grocery bag and buried the body in her family’s backyard, police said.
Sheriff Jones told the Charlotte Observer that killing the baby could have been an accident.
‘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,’ he said.
