Posted on 11/27/2008 4:37:38 PM PST by Born Conservative
BERWICK (PA)- Police allege a 23-year old woman abandoned her newborn infant girl outside her home early Saturday morning.
Jennifer Lynn Killian, of Garfield Avenue, who was born in Kingston, was charged with felony counts of aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child, and a misdemeanor count of recklessly endangering another person. She was arraigned early Thursday morning by District Judge Marvin Shrawder in Danville and jailed at the Columbia County Prison for lack of $1 million dollars, police said.
Police linked the infant girl to Killian through DNA.
According to the criminal complaint:
Killian gave birth to the infant inside her home at 117 Garfield Ave., and placed the infant in a plastic bag in an attempt to hide her pregnancy and birth from her parents. Killian opened a window and dropped the infant to the ground in 17 degree weather, the criminal complaint says.
Police said the infant girl, when found, had a core temperature of 84 degrees. The newborn was rushed to Berwick Hospital and transported to Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, where she is recovering, police said.
Police said in the criminal complaint that Killian's father, Charles Drasher, discovered the infant in the bag.
Drasher heard noises believing his granddaughter, Killian's 1-year old girl, was crying. When Drasher determined it wasn't his granddaughter, he went outside and found the infant in the bag, the criminal complaint says.
Police said after the infant was flown to Geisinger Medical, physicians determined the infant could not have survived outside for more than five minutes.
Police stated in the criminal complaint that information received from witnesses led them to Killian.
Police recovered the placenta that was tested for DNA at the laboratory in Willow Grove. A search warrant was executed for Killian to submit to a DNA sample on Wednesday, according to the criminal complaint.
Results of the DNA tests determined Killian was the mother, police said.
For more on the story, read The Times Leader on Friday.
Also, Pennsylvania has a Safe Haven law, which eliminates the need for a mother to stuff her newborn into a plastic bag and drop the baby out of the window in 17 degree weather.
Ping.
I was wondering if they had a safe haven law.
For God’s sake, if only she had voluntarily given her baby to someone, rather than abandon it.
I hope she is on a COLD cell
in
You know, I would not have wanted to disappoint or upset my parents either, but I think killing a baby would have been a much greater disappointment to them than having one out of wedlock. Sheesh, in this day and age it’s not like the neighbors even look down on you.
The girl is either crazy (the kind of crazy you lock up) or has no heart. Either way she shouldn’t be running around loose.
This isn’t her first child; the article says she already has a 1 year old.
A local talk radio host (prior to this development) was saying that the mother who did this should be given the benefit of the doubt. I agreed to an extent. However, being that she already has a child, she knew better, and was already living at her father’s house (thus, the baby had shelter).
Packing up her just-born baby in a plastic bag and throwing her out the window - she DESERVES to be sitting in a prison cell.
The ovaries should be removed prior to incarceration.
Scared and stupid I would say. Sometimes when you hide something for so long you build up the reaction to it to far beyond reality until you scar yourself into doing something stupid. Thankfully the baby is going to be fine.
I wouldn’t agree that she should have been given the benefit of the doubt no matter if it was the 1st or 10th child. She knew that throwing that baby out in freezing weather would be a death sentence.
I don’t buy that. She knew it was wrong. She did it anyway. Unless she is certified as mentally ill (that is does not know right from wrong) she should suffer severe consequences.
I initially give the benefit of the doubt when the information in the media is limited. However, the local paper (online only by subscription) had more details this morning:
- Killian claims that she planned on taking the child to the local hospital, which is about 1 mile from her house (that proves she KNEW about the Safe Haven law)
- the baby was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, but Killian told the police she didn’t unwrap the cord
- she put the baby in a Wal Mart bag that already had a “box of tampons and other trash”
- After she “lowered” the bag out the 1st floor bathroom window, she “tidied up” the bathroom where she gave birth
- Killian is technically married, but the father of her first child was found out to be someone other than her husband, so the couple is no longer together, and are in the process of getting a divorce
-she wanted an abortion with her first child (now 16 months old) and her parents pressured to follow through with it (she obviously didn’t follow through with it). Her mother even threatened to shoot her if she got pregnant a second time, but Killian didn’t consider an abortion this time
- she was employed in a daycare
-she claimed that after cleaning up the bathroom, she was on her way outside to wrap the baby in towels, but her father was on the way to find the baby, so she didn’t go out
-”Baby Doe” has shown signs of pneumonia
- there are inconsistencies in the grandfather’s statements; he said that the bag came from his wife’s unlocked car, because it had a box of tampons, and he “knew his daughter’s menstrual cycle was about to begin”, but Killian’s estranged husband said that his mother in law always locks her car, because they had previously been vandalized; Killian told police she took the bag and the towel from the bathroom; not her mother’s car
- Killian told the judge that she is not addicted to any substances, but the results of toxicology tests on the baby are not released
- one of Killian’s coworkers asked her a few months back when she was taking maternity leave. Killian told her she just gained weight in her abdomen. When she reported for work on Monday, the coworker said she no longer looked pregnant
I posted before I saw that she already had one baby.
What a sad dysfunctional family.
Sadly, people like this have kids every day. They don’t all try to kill them, but it’s hard to imagine she would have made much of a mother even if she had not tossed the baby out.
It’s enough to make me really really cynical. I had better pray for a kinder heart.
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