A 17-year-old Bronx girl was arrested and made bail Thursday for allegedly throwing her newborn son out her fifth-floor apartment window to his death in October after panicking about the baby not making noise.
The teenager was arrested after a months-long investigation and arraigned Thursday night. She made $20,000 bail, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office told the Bronx Times.
The NYPD released a report about the Oct. 24 incident on April 14 saying the medical examiner had ruled the baby’s death to be a homicide and that no arrests had been made.
But according to the NYPD and the district attorney’s office, the teenager spoke to police who were called to Lincoln Medical Center on Oct. 25, the day after she gave birth at home. She told the detective on the case that she threw her baby out the window, according to the criminal complaint filed Thursday.
The hospital and the teenager’s apartment are both located in the 40th Precinct, which covers Port Morris, Mott Haven and Melrose.
On Thursday night the NYPD revealed the teenager had been arrested for manslaughter and murder, which, according to the criminal complaint, brings the teenage girl four felony charges.
Detective Robert Cintron, per his Thursday statement in the criminal complaint, conducted a Mirandized interview with the young girl on Oct. 25, in which the teenager told him she delivered her baby the night before in her bedroom. The baby was breathing, making noises and not crying too loud, she allegedly told Cintron, who works in the NYPD Bronx homicide squad.
The girl told the detective she then left the baby to go eat, and after a couple of hours, she noticed he wasn’t making any noises, according to the complaint. At that point, she panicked, put the baby in a blue pillow case, and threw it out of her fifth-floor bedroom window, she allegedly told Cintron in the interview.
Following the interview, the detective canvassed the area and recovered a blue pillow case with a newborn baby’s body inside and notified the chief medical examiner’s office, according to the complaint.
EMS pronounced the baby dead on the scene, according to the NYPD.
Dr. Kristin Hord from the medical examiner’s office told Cintron that an autopsy showed the newborn baby was born alive before suffering from various injuries, including but not limited to multiple blunt force trauma injuries to the torso, including a lacerated liver which caused internal bleeding, thereby causing his death, according to the criminal complaint.
The teenager was arrested after the investigation was completed and there was enough evidence to charge her, Bronx District Attorney spokesperson Patrice O’Shaughnessy told the Bronx Times.
“A ruling of Homicide does not mean murder,” she said. “We have to gather evidence to support a charge of murder including the official autopsy report and witnesses.”
It has yet to be determined whether the 17-year-old will be tried as an adult or juvenile.
Read our update on this case below:
Reach Aliya Schneider at aschneider@schnepsmedia.com or (718) 260-4597. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
