A housekeeper on New York’s Long Island gave birth in her employer’s bathroom, killed the newborn, then went to a hospital with the body in a bag and asked her unknowing husband to throw it away, prosecutors said on Friday.
A lawyer for the woman, Santos Elena Ruiz Solano, said the baby was stillborn, premature and the result of a rape.
Solano, 26, of Honduras, pleaded not guilty to murder and was being held without bail.
Solano delivered the girl early on Sunday last week at her employer’s West Islip home, where she lives, US police said.
Then she went to a hospital for treatment of childbirth complications, bringing a couple of bags with her, police said.
She told her husband to throw away one of the bags, but after putting it in a garbage pail, he and her employer became suspicious, looked inside and found the body, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Glenn Kurtzrock said.
Solano had not told anyone she was pregnant and initially denied it to hospital staffers and police, he said.
Kurtzrock said medical examiners have determined the baby was born alive and had three skull fractures that would have required “significant force.”
“It would not have been caused by the baby simply falling or being dropped out of someone’s arms,” he said.
Solano’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said she was raped while en route to the US, where, he said, she arrived about six months ago.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, but is doing so because Solano’s name was public before her lawyer described her as a rape victim and because of the seriousness of the murder charge.
Brown called what happened a “tragic case,” but not a murder.
“She is a mother who gave birth to a stillborn baby. She’s traumatized,” he said. “But now she is facing the hammer of the criminal justice system.”
He suggested the baby’s skull fractures could have resulted from falling against a toilet bowl while being delivered.
Kurtzrock said authorities were investigating the rape allegation, and “if anything, that would be a motive for what she did.”
Solano has two children, 5 and 6, in Honduras, Brown said. Her husband, Selvin Adonis Hernandez, told reporters outside court that she is a good mother.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese