Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Deputies: Girl, 14, gave birth, then strangled baby
BayNews9 ^ | Friday, September 28, 2012 | Staff

Posted on 09/28/2012 10:48:42 AM PDT by rarestia

A 14-year-old girl is facing homicide charges after deputies said she gave birth to a baby in her Lakeland home, then strangled the baby and hid his body in her bedroom.

Deputies arrested the Kathleen High student on Thursday, five days after the Polk County Sheriff's Office received a call that a baby had been found inside a shoebox in the girl's Lakeland home, authorities said.

Investigators later determined that she had delivered the baby in the bathroom, then choked the baby to death.

"Everybody's a loser here," Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press conference on Friday. "This 14-year-old child murdered her infant baby that she successfully delivered at home."

Mother discovers baby's body in dirty laundry

Detectives responded to the home and learned that the girl's mother had been collecting dirty laundry on Saturday when she smelled an odor in the girl's room. The mother gathered a plastic bag of wet, dirty clothes from a "storage stool," put the bag in the sink and started sorting through the wet items, the report said.

That's when the mother found the baby's body. The mother called her sisters, who in turn called 911, the report said.

Detectives came to the family home and interivewed the girl and her mother.

The girl told detectives that she started feeling sick on Monday, and that the discomfort continued through Wednesday. At some point between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., the girl went into the bathroom and went into labor, the report said.

She told detectives she put a towel in her mouth and turned on the bathroom water to hide any noise she might make, investigators said.

Detectives said she told them that as the pain of the labor got worse, she used a pair of scissors to "pry the baby out." The baby boy, who measured 9-and-a-half pounds and was 20 inches long, was delivered alive and into the toilet, the report said.

Detectives said the girl then took the baby out of the toilet, felt for a pulse, then put her hands around the baby's neck and squeezed until he was no longer breathing. She told detectives she choked the baby to "stop him from breathing," the report said.

The girl cleaned up the bathroom, bathed herself and the dead infant, and then put the baby's body in a shoebox along with dirty towels and clothes, deputies said.

That same day, medical staff at Lakeland Regional Medical Center contacted authorities to report that they had treated the girl for what was believed to be a miscarriage.

The arrest affidavit indicates that the girl showed signs of a miscarriage and that she had four or five lacerations inside her genital area.

Judd: Girl hid pregnancy from mother

Detectives said the girl, who weighs 100 pounds and is 5-feet-3, had been hiding her pregnancy from her family by wearing baggy clothes, including sweatshirts and jackets, for the past several months.

According to the report, two of the girl's aunts suspected the girl was pregnant and talked to the mother about it, but the mother had denied the girl was pregnant.

According to the arrest affidavit, the mother had given her daughter two pregnancy tests, both of which she took with no parent present, because her mother wanted to protect her daughter's privacy. The tests came back with no result, with the mother interpreted as a negative result.

The mother was in "absolute total denial," Judd said.

An autopsy determined that the baby was healthy and alive when he was born, and that the cause of death was asphyxia from strangulation and blunt force trauma. The blunt force trauma was consistent with the use of scissors, which would have hit the baby in the head when the girl used them during labor, the report said.

The girl has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. She was medically screened and cleared, then taken to Polk County Juvenile Detention Facility.

We are not releasing the girl's identity in accordance with our crime guidelines, as it is not yet known if she will be charged as an adult.

Judd said the girl confessed to the crime, saying, she did it because "she didn't want to change the relationship with her mother and her family." Judd said the girl also said she didn't know what to do with the child.

Judd said the case "makes you sick to your stomach."

"There will never be an adequate explanation, nor do we expect that all of our questions will be answered," he said.


TOPICS: Local News
KEYWORDS: abortion; pregnancy; teen
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-29 last
To: blueunicorn6

<< Matthew 24:12 >>
And because of the abundance of evil, the love of many will grow cold.
///
as you said, we draw comfort, that the innocent is now with God.


21 posted on 09/28/2012 11:31:18 AM PDT by Elendur (It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. - Thomas Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: rarestia

SOMEWHERE IN THIS WORLD IS A RAPIST GETTING AWAY W ITH HIS THIRD OF THIS MURDER! No sympathy for anyone involved, including the Aunts!

May God and Sheriff Grady Judd do justice for that Angel Boy. Grady first to go Medieval on the RAPIST.
http://www.snopes.com/crime/cops/judd.asp


22 posted on 09/28/2012 11:31:39 AM PDT by GOYAKLA (Recall/ Impeachment Day, November 6, 2012. FUBO, same for RINOs)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rarestia

Bump to track for more information.


23 posted on 09/28/2012 11:33:43 AM PDT by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rarestia

Babies having babies so sad

The little girl was scared s***less. Who knows she might have been abused by an uncle or even her father.

Not condoning what she did. Just a sad situation all the way around


24 posted on 09/28/2012 12:50:38 PM PDT by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Opinionated Blowhard

She was using scissors as a “pry bar” to speed delivery, she could have scrambled his brain with the scissors or choked the boy to death while his feet were still inside her... no legal problems... In Florida we have “safe haven” laws , she could have taken the baby to any hospital or fire station and walked away no questions asked.


25 posted on 09/28/2012 1:27:15 PM PDT by Neidermeyer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: rarestia
this young girl was sexually active since her own mother was testing her for pregnancy....

so there are consequences to an over sexualized culture...to having Hooters bars enticing teenage girls to act like sluts...to having porn everywhere...to teaching kids that there is no right nor wrong when it comes to sexual activity...

who was the father?...anther 14 yro boy feeling his oats?...

really people ...what do you expect in this culture?.....nothing is shameful anymore...nothing...

girls and women are not wanted for their virtue, they are wanted for sex, period, and sadly, by a ever growing sector of the male gender....

we better turn things around....

I don't know what its going to take....

personally, I am ready to go live in a fundamentalist compound...rather give up my rights than have to live in the great unwashed animals this country is producing so rampantly....

26 posted on 09/28/2012 1:45:05 PM PDT by cherry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: annieokie

share this story
4,352
86
669
Get Crime Alerts
Sign Up
Submit this story

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. — A young mother charged with murder has told police she hid her pregnancy, gave birth to twin sons at her family’s home and killed the infants by smothering their cries so her parents wouldn’t hear them.

Police in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville arrested Lindsey Lowe, 25, on Wednesday after her father discovered one baby’s body in a laundry basket.

According to a police affidavit, the young mother said she didn’t tell her family she was pregnant, but believes she got pregnant in January and never visited a doctor. Police said on Thursday they were trying to identify the father of the twins.

Police said they interviewed Lowe who said she went into labor Monday evening while on the toilet at her parent’s home. She said the first baby fell into the toilet and began to cry.

“Lowe stated that the baby was crying and Lowe did not want her parents to hear and find out about the child,” police wrote in the affidavit. “Lowe stated that she put her hand over the child’s mouth and she stated that she kept it there until the child was dead, which was a couple of minutes.” Lowe said she never checked the sex of the child.

A few minutes later, the affidavit says, she gave birth to the second child, who also fell in the toilet. She again put her hand over the baby’s mouth and held it there until the baby died, which she said took less time than the first child. She put both babies in the laundry basket and covered them up with blankets.

Police said both boys appeared to be full term and weighing about 5 or 6 pounds.

Lowe, who works at a pediatric dentist’s office, was charged with first-degree murder and remained in jail Thursday with no bond. Police said she is undergoing a medical evaluation.

Police Lt. Scott Ryan said Thursday that he didn’t know how she hid the pregnancy, just saying that she didn’t tell anyone. He would not say whether Lowe was helping them to identify the father.


27 posted on 09/28/2012 2:40:32 PM PDT by Harold Shea (RVN `70 - `71)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: rarestia

A new hero for the Left.


28 posted on 09/28/2012 2:41:03 PM PDT by dfwgator (I'm voting for Ryan and that other guy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cherry

There’s an element to the story that’s not been discussed: the father.

I’m betting since the mother turned a blind eye to what others saw as obvious, she’s either unfit to be a parent or she’s covering for the person who impregnated her child.


29 posted on 09/28/2012 3:52:06 PM PDT by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-29 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson