A woman from Springfield in Missouri, Natalie Annell Weaver, 21, has been handed down a sentence of five years in prison after abandoning her newborn in a bathroom at her university dorms.
All of this happened at the Southwestern Assemblies of God University, in Waxahachie, Texas.
The woman has pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, according to reports, and has further been charged with abusing a corpse. This is all in relation to the death of her newborn daughter.
Authorities were reportedly alerted to the situation around one year ago (April, 17th, 2018), discovering that the woman had given birth in the bathroom of the dorm and that the baby was born with the cord wrapped around its neck.
Officers found the baby in a trash can, declaring it deceased at the time of discovering the body.
It is not clear why the woman chose to give birth in the bathroom and refused to seek help for her obvious health conditions afterward, but the court certainly did not take lightly to her story.
She turned herself in voluntarily around a month after being initially charged with the crimes, and the delay could have added to the severity of her sentence in the end. In the beginning, she had denied giving birth to the baby.
During her October 2018 indictment, Ellis County District Attorney Patrick Wilson said in a statement: “This was a horrific and inhumane crime. A precious newborn was literally thrown in the garbage by her own mother. It’s both shocking and mind-boggling. And it didn’t have to happen. She would have avoided prosecution and, more importantly, her baby girl would probably still be alive.”
It is also worth pointing out that the state where this happened is among the ones that allow mothers to deliver their unwanted babies to select destinations, like fire stations and hospitals, and deal with the situation in a more humane way.
It is not known why the woman chose her approach instead, and many have been highly critical of her over the incident after finding out how things went down. The woman has not made any public comments.
However, some people did understand the leniency shown with the 5-year prison sentence, the pressure of her environment added to the fact that she probably did not want to kill the child might have played in her favor.
