THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412270081
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Police may receive preliminary results of an autopsy today on an infant who was found dead in a trash bag Sunday.
The results will help them decide whether to charge the 26-year-old woman who is believed to have given birth to the child.
If the premature infant was born alive, the mother could be charged with murder. Absent such a finding, she may not face prosecution.
Police found the infant about 5:20 a.m. Sunday at a home in the 1300 block of W. 25th St., said police spokesman Larry Hill.
The gender was uncertain because of the infant's condition.
The baby - believed to have been born about two or three months early - was in a trash bag that had been left in a green garbage can inside the residence.
Police went to the home after being alerted by doctors at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital that the woman had come in to the emergency room about 4 a.m.
She was hemorrhaging, and doctors quickly determined that she had recently given birth.
It was unclear Monday what, if anything, the woman told doctors about the infant.
The woman's name was withheld because she had not been charged. She remained hospitalized Monday.
In August, the state Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction of a Maryland woman found guilty two years earlier of killing her newborn while visiting a Hampton University dormitory.
The woman, Stacy Myers, now 20, was convicted of second-degree murder for placing her newborn daughter in a plastic garbage bag and leaving her on a dormitory's third-floor ledge. The mother received a suspended sentence.
The Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, saying prosecutors failed to prove that the baby was born alive - or, if she was, just how she was killed. by CNB