By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
SELIGMAN, Mo. — Barry County authorities Monday were trying to figure out what caused the death of an apparent newborn baby they found in the bedroom closet of a 16-year-old Seligman girl.
Sheriff Mick Epperly said the girl was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Bentonville, Ark., and admitted for a reported miscarriage after first being taken Thursday night to the hospital in Cassville by her mother.
The Barry County Sheriff’s Department was contacted Friday morning about the matter by Bentonville police after an attending doctor reported that the girl may have given live birth to a child, Epperly said. Hours later, sheriff’s investigators found a baby girl in a plastic shopping bag inside the girl’s bedroom closet at her family’s mobile home on the edge of Seligman, the sheriff said.
The infant, estimated as being almost a full-term baby, was dead. Investigators found blood on the wall of the girl’s bedroom and bloody towels in the home, the sheriff said.
He said an autopsy was conducted Saturday, and that the pathologist does not believe the baby was stillborn.
“We still don’t know what caused the death at this point,” Epperly said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon. “But (the autopsy) did show that there was some air in the lungs and that the child had taken some breaths.”
The sheriff said the baby’s body did not show any apparent signs of blunt-force trauma, strangulation or smothering.
He said the girl, who underwent surgery at the Bentonville hospital for hemorrhaging, had yet to be interviewed by sheriff’s investigators on Monday. He said they are hoping to talk with her, her mother and a former boyfriend as the investigation proceeds.
Juvenile authorities were contacted Friday about the matter because of the girl’s age, and an attorney was appointed to represent her, Epperly said. He said the girl was expected to meet with her attorney Monday afternoon, and that investigators might be able to talk to her after that.
Epperly said investigators believe the girl was home alone when she gave birth or had a miscarriage.
The sheriff said it took investigators some time Friday morning to determine where the girl lived in the Seligman area. He said that once they learned in which subdivision her family lived, they found no one there and the home padlocked.
Deputies later obtained permission from the teen’s mother by telephone to enter the residence and search for the baby, Epperly said. The girl’s 18-year-old sister met them at the residence about 11 a.m. and let them in, he said.
Investigators learned that the sister had come home about 4 p.m. Thursday, and discovered blood in the hallway and bathroom of the trailer home, the sheriff said. She helped her younger sister clean up most of the blood, he said.
“(The sister) thought she was having a miscarriage at that time,” he said.
When the teen’s mother came home from work about 6:30 p.m., she took her daughter to the hospital in Cassville, he said.
While deputies were searching the home, the 16-year-old girl’s mother recontacted them by phone and said her daughter had revealed to her that the baby was in the closet, Epperly said. But the girl had yet to indicate by Monday whether she believed she had given live birth to the child, he said.
