A young mother in jail, facing a charge of attempted murder.
A newborn girl, wrapped in a flowery yellow blanket put inside a black plastic garbage bag left to die.
Those who advocate for Indiana’s safe-haven laws see Alison Lesch’s case as a tragedy lessened, but not quite averted. Advocates say better education – and funding behind it – is needed to promote the law, which allows a child up to 45 days old to be left, no questions asked, with emergency services workers at any hospital emergency room, fire station or law enforcement agency in Indiana.
Police said it’s a miracle the baby – buried in trash for several hours on a mild fall day – didn’t die.
Lesch, 19, was being held without bail Monday at the DeKalb County Jail.
The baby girl, who Indiana State Police said was just hours old, was turned over to the Indiana Department of Child Services.
A woman living in an apartment complex in the 300 block of East 19th Street, Auburn, told police she was taking her trash to the bin when she heard a baby crying.
Under a pile of garbage, in a black plastic garbage bag with a red drawstring, she found a baby just before 1:19 p.m. Sunday, Indiana State Police Detective Mark Heffelfinger said. Garbage in similar trash bags led them to Lesch’s apartment. When Heffelfinger confronted her, Lesch told him she had no knowledge of the baby or who might have put it in the trash bin, he said.
But a family member identified items in the trash, including the yellow floral blanket in which the baby had been wrapped, as belonging to Lesch. She and another family member told Heffelfinger Lesch had said in March she might be pregnant.
Heffelfinger returned to the apartment, where Lesch – who again denied having the baby or knowing who abandoned it – gave him permission to search her home. An area of her bedroom floor was damp and stained red, he said.
That’s when police received a search warrant for the apartment and an order for a medical examination of Lesch. On the way to the hospital, Heffelfinger said, she confessed to giving birth late Saturday in her bedroom.
She claimed not to know she was pregnant, he said.
After giving birth, Lesch said she put the baby in a basket on the floor, then took a shower and cleaned up the mess. She lay on the bed all night, unable to sleep, Heffelfinger said.
The baby was trying to breathe, but wasn’t moving much or making much noise, she told him. Lesch said she tried to feed her, but the baby wouldn’t eat, Heffelfinger said.
A friend picked her up for work at 10:30 a.m. Sunday. Lesch asked her friend to wait, twice, while she took garbage bags to the trash bin, that friend told the detective.
Department of Child Services spokeswoman Ann Houseworth said she couldn’t comment on Lesch’s baby. But in general, a child in that situation would be placed in foster care, Houseworth said.
Jeanette Deke walked across the gravel lot outside Forest Pointe Apartments on Monday night to throw a small bag of trash in the brown Serv-All bin.
She’d done the same thing early Sunday afternoon – tossed in a small bag and slammed the lid – minutes before another tenant found Lesch’s baby in the bin.
Deke wonders: Did she hit the baby with her garbage? Did the noise of the lid wake the infant?
Deke doesn’t know Lesch, and although she said she can’t understand what would drive a mother to abandon a child, she’s not passing judgment. Deke only wishes Lesch would have reached out to a friend or even a stranger.
“If she just would’ve banged on one of our doors, took it to the fire department, took it to the police station, whatever,” she said. “She needed help.”
