A teenage girl faces murder charges after a newborn baby was found hidden in a tote bag at her home, with shocking injuries on the tiny body that point to homicide
A 14-year-old girl in Louisiana could face life in prison for first-degree murder after a newborn baby girl was found dead inside a tote bag at her home.
Deputies with the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office were called to a local hospital on 21 November, according to reports. Staff told them a teenage girl in their care had recently given birth at her home, WAFB reports.
When the officers went to the girl’s home, they reportedly found a tote bag containing a dead newborn. The sheriff’s department said they believe the girl had hidden her pregnancy from her family and put the baby’s body in the tote bag to hide it.
WAFB reports the teen was initially charged with failure to seek assistance and obstruction of justice over the baby’s death. But an autopsy then found evidence of a homicide and the charge was switched to first-degree murder.
WWL-TV further reports the infant had severe injuries to her neck. Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said the child was likely born alive at full term and was allegedly killed shortly after birth. The 14-year-old is consequently being held at a juvenile detention centre.
The tragedy comes after a dead newborn baby boy was found in a plastic bag outside a church in Notting Hill in west London. A woman in her 30s was later arrested and taken to hospital for treatment.
A 30-year-old British woman also recently admitted strangling her newborn to death after giving birth in the bathroom of her seaside home in Bognor Regis. Gintare Suminaite told the Old Bailey that she’d killed the tot while mentally disturbed from giving birth.
The court accepted a charge of infanticide, rather than murder, partly based on how blood loss might have affected the defendant. Studies show that babies born to teenage mothers can be at a higher risk of being killed.
Newborns to mums under 17 run about eight times the risk of being killed. If mums aged 17-19 have already had a child, the risk is 10 times higher. Teen mums often have little education and aren’t prepared for parenthood.
They may also face denial, fear, rejection, and a lack of support from partners, family, or their community. Hidden pregnancies pose an especially high risk of ‘neonaticide’, when babies are killed within their first 24 hours.
A study in the UK found that 23% of female baby killers were teens, although they’re responsible for only 7% of births. The mean age of mothers who killed or abandoned newborns in a North Carolina study was 19.1 years.
Newborns are mainly killed at home, often by asphyxiation/strangulation and drowning.
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