“I just saw the drain on the side of the road and then I just put baby in there.”
In November 2014 a 30-year-old woman gave birth to full term baby at Blacktown Hospital in Sydney.
Her newborn baby boy was healthy and robust but the mother was alone for her birth, unsupported by the baby’s father or family.
The woman was sentenced to o a maximum of three years and six months in jail but will be up for for parole next month. Via Seven News.
Thirty-six hours after the newborn was born the young mother, from a Samoan family in Sydney, travelled by train to Quakers Hill.
There she sat in a park for a short while and then walked to the nearby M7 – a major road in the area, wrapped her son's feet in a plastic bag from the hospital "because she was putting his feet down first" she told police, and pushed her newborn baby through a small hole in a concrete drain.
The baby, still wrapped in his striped hospital blanket and still with a peg to his umbilical cord fell 2.5 metres down the drain.
There he lay for five days abandoned at the bottom of the concrete dungeon.
His mother had hid her pregnancy from her Aunt and Uncle with who she lived in Quaker’s Hill. For five days she was the only person who knew that lying underground on the side of a major Sydney road was a newborn baby boy.
For five days she thought her plan had worked. He was dead and she was free from her responsibilities as his mother.
Yesterday the woman, who was tracked down by police through hospital records and arrested, learnt that her desired freedom would arrive – later than she hoped – but still just one year and nine months after she was arrested.
The baby was finally found by cyclists five days after he was abandoned, it took six men including three police officers to lift the concrete slab covering the drain, which weighed over 200kg. Underneath, they found the newborn baby wrapped in a hospital blanket, with a peg still attached to his umbilical cord.
It took six men including three police officers to lift the concrete slab covering the drain. Via Twitter.
One of the cyclists who found the baby 2.5 metres down the drain told Fairfax Media at the time “I’ve got two kids of my own, so I know what a screaming baby sounds like”, said Mr Otter. “It was so intense, you couldn’t not tell it was a baby”.
“When I arrived there were several bike riders, cyclists and pedestrians standing around the drain. Myself and several other police have come up, we heard something coming from the drain,” Senior Constable McAlister said told The Daily Telegraph.
“How could someone do it? I, myself, have kids and we’re expecting a baby in a few more months so it’s not good that someone’s going through this and has done this to a little one,” he said.
Police pulled the newborn from the drain. Via Seven News.
The woman pleaded guilty to two charges and was sentenced to a maximum of three years and six months in jail but with a minimum of one year and nine months she may be released within weeks on parole, after time already served.
She had her attempted murder charge downgraded to abandoning a child under seven causing it to be in danger of death and recklessly causing grievous bodily harm.
Top Comments
Damn right alarm bells should have gone off earlier, all of this could have been avoided. What were Bankstown medical staff thinking allowing a disabled person to go home alone with a newborn, when it was obvious she had no support, and no visitors at all? Unbelievable.
The public hospital system had the ability and precursory knowledge to intervene. Data such as medical history or lack thereof, race, demographic, status, presentation, psychology, late termination request, no family, etc etc.
Why didn't the admission trigger system alerts?
If the data profiling was not conducted, why not?
Poor system? Cost? Funding? Staff training? Racial bias?
Yeah cause governments throw heaps of money at hospitals