“There is perhaps no victim more defenseless than a newborn child”, says District Attorney Cyrus Vance in a statement.
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Security personnel at a Victoria’s Secret store in Herald Square stopped RODRIGUEZ and her friend for possible shoplifting, and discovered the deceased infant in RODRIGUEZ’s bag.
In a text message, Rodriguez used a vulgarity to describe the baby and added she’d “dig a hole” and “put it somewhere” adding an “LOL” – online jargon for “laughing out loud” – the prosecutor said.
Defense lawyer Earl Ward says Rodriguez’s term of pregnancy was unclear.
The baby boy was full term and weighed 8lbs, prosecutors said. He says Rodriguez didn’t know she was pregnant and had a stillbirth.
But she is believed to have made a detour to Victoria Secret in a bid to steal – stuffing items into the same bag that carried her dead son.
“She’s a confused young girl who had no idea what to do with the fetus after it was stillborn”, Ward said.
However, prosecutors argued that Rodriguez had attempted to hide pregnancies before. That child didn’t survive.
“Then the two of them discussed via text getting rid of it. Smashing it up, so it didn’t look like a body”. Prosecutors said the baby born in 2013 lived a few minutes before dying, the AP noted. Ward said air in the boy’s lungs could have been a byproduct of decomposing after death.
The 18-year-old had originally only faced misdemeanor petit larceny charges, which were later dismissed by a Manhattan judge, following the gruesome discovery by a guard at the Herald Square Victoria’s Secret back in October 2013.
Rodriguez gave birth for the second time in 2012, aged 15.
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Tiona Rodriguez is charged with killing her newborn son and then going shopping.
