Tiona Rodriguez, 18 and from Brooklyn, pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree and was remanded into custody.
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Rodriguez is then accused of stuffing the baby’s body into a shopping bag and setting out to dispose of it. The investigation by prosecutors revealed Rodriguez had become a mother at 14 and “callously” decided not to tell anyone when she got pregnant two years later. “The baby’s body was only discovered after his mother was questioned by a store security officer who suspected her of theft”.
To carry out a plan formulated for weeks, the then 17-year-old Rodriguez went to a friend’s house on October 16, 2013, and delivered in a bathroom, tore the 3.6-kilogram boy’s umbilical cord with her hands, Ms Ferrari said.
“There is perhaps no victim more defenseless than a newborn child”, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in announcing the indictment.
The following day, Rodriguez was stopped by security at the Victoria’s Secret store in Herald Square for possible shoplifting, and discovered the infant dead inside her bag.
But on other end, defense lawyer says that she was not aware of her pregnancy and she did this out of confusion.
But prosecutors said Rodriguez had tried to hide pregnancies before.
Rodriguez and her boyfriend then discussed by text message how they might get rid of the tiny corpse, mentioning the possibility of smashing it, burning it or burying it, Ms Ferrari said. Prosecutors said the baby born in 2013 lived a few minutes before dying, the AP noted.
He said his client was a “confused young girl who had no idea what to do with the fetus that was stillborn”, the Daily News reported. A previous birth in 2012 also ended in an unclear death.
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New York’s chief medical examiner later ruled that the child had died as a result of homicidal asphyxiation.
