A woman has pleaded guilty to killing her newborn baby and carrying him around in a shopping bag.
Tiona Rodriguez, 21, told a Manhattan court that she delivered a baby boy when she was 17 in a bathroom of a friend’s apartment in 2013, and immediately smothered the child.
Prosecutors said Rodriguez then sent a text saying she would “dig a hole, put it somewhere, lol, then we go eat IHOP.”
She was later stopped by security at a Victoria’s Secret in Herald Square, New York, after being accused of stealing a pair of jeans.
The guard discovered the baby’s body in her bag after noticing a foul odor, authorities said.
Rodriguez confessed as part of a manslaughter plea deal to reduce her prison sentence to 16 years. She was previously facing a murder charge that carried a life sentence.
“Tiona Rodriguez deliberately and intentionally killed her defenseless newborn child,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance, reported Pix 11. “While today’s plea cannot bring back the life that was so abruptly ended, it is a just end to this tragedy.”
According to NY Daily News, the district attorney said that Rodriguez had also given birth to a baby in 2012 in her bathtub, later texting her boyfriend, “It’s dead.”
She is expected to be sentenced on Feb. 6.
