Tiona Rodriguez, a New York teenager, was caught shoplifting at a Victoria’s Secret with a dead fetus in her bag. It was reported that the baby died of asphyxiation.
Police sources told the New York Daily News that the fetus was asphyxiated.
She now will likely face homicide charges, reported the New York Post, which also reported that the baby died of asphyxiation rather than a miscarriage.
Guards at the Victoria’s Secret on Broadway in Manhattan stopped Rodriguez and another 17-year-old when they were shoplifting.
When they approached the teens, they noticed a strong odor emitting from one of the girl’s bags and found the body.
Rodriguez told police that she suffered a miscarriage a day earlier. She is already the mother of another son.
A source with the NYPD told the Daily News that she was 6 1/2 months pregnant when she went into labor, but others said that she was full-term.
“She said she didn’t know what to do,” the source said.
Another source told the New York Post that the fetus was clean as if washed–or drowned.
“She said she had the baby yesterday,” another source told the paper. “She said it was not full-term. She said she didn’t know what to do with it.”
Other Victoria’s Secret shoppers were horrified.
“It makes me feel sick. I don’t understand the thought process, to have a baby in a bag and then shoplift,” said Erit Maor, according to the Post.
The girls were arrested on charges of petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, police said. The teenager thought to have given birth was hospitalized, and the other was questioned by police.
One of the girls told detectives she was carrying the remains because she had delivered a day earlier and didn’t know what to do, authorities said. It wasn’t clear whether the fetus was alive or dead when delivered, or how far along the girl was in her pregnancy.
The medical examiner’s office was performing an autopsy on the remains, and more charges could follow depending on the results.
A person who answered the phone at the home of the girl believed to have given birth had no comment. No phone number was available at the address provided by police for the second teenager.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
