A 41-year-old Washington state woman was taken into custody this week on suspicion of manslaughter in the death of her newborn in February 2023.
The womanbut was ordered held Wednesday on a $150,000 bail, KOMO reported.
An arrest report says she did not know she was pregnant and began having labor pains while riding her bicycle near a railroad track in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. She told police she went into some bushes and delivered the baby.
“The defendant did stay there with the child for about four to five hours and then left it in the bushes and boarded a bus,” a prosecutor said in court on Wednesday. “The defendant admitted to this. She also admitted that she did not seek medical attention.”
The baby was reported to Seattle Animal Control on February 19, 2023, in the agency’s “dead animal” portal but was not seen by staff until February 22 because of the holiday. When staff saw the report, which included a photograph captioned “dead baby abandoned in the bushes,” they contacted police.
Police spoke with the man who made the report, and he told them he was on his way home with his family and stopped to use the bathroom when he found the body. He said he didn’t think it was an emergency since the baby was dead, and he didn’t want to wait.
KIRO said that the King County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the mother’s drug abuse and preterm birth contributed to the newborn’s death, but they could not determine if the child was stillborn.
The mother told police, “The baby made little noises that I had never heard before.”
Investigators found the baby’s father using DNA, KOMO reported. He told police he had sex with only one woman in the past six or seven years and did not know she was pregnant. He said she was homeless and came to his apartment only on occasion, the report says.
She was found on Tuesday and brought in for questioning.
The woman is being held on suspicion of second-degree manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and unlawful disposal of human remains. Local news agencies did not name her because she has not been formally charged.
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