Sonia Cristal Jimenez is currently facing one first-degree felony count of intentional child abuse resulting in death, authorities announced
According to a news release from the Las Cruces Police Department, at about 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, a local hospital notified police that Jimenez's boyfriend had brought her to the hospital and it was apparent she had just given birth to a baby. However, neither Jimenez nor the adult male who accompanied her to the hospital had a child with them.
Police spoke to the boyfriend who told them that he and Jimenez had just been at Burn Lake and that Jimenez had spent a lot of time in the portable toilets, according to a report from the Las Cruces Sun.
Officers responded to the area off Burn Lake Road where the couple had been and discovered the newborn's body "in the holding tank of a portable toilet," the department said. Firefighters with the Las Cruces Fire Department reached the scene a short while later and recovered the "lifeless baby" from the toilet's "holding tank." She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators said the evidence indicated that Jimenez "gave birth to a live baby, cut the umbilical cord and placed the child in the holding tank where she drowned."
"An autopsy conducted Monday at the New Mexico Medical Investigator's Office in Albuquerque revealed that the baby was alive when she was dropped into the portable toilet," the release states. "The autopsy showed that she breathed and swallowed the blue chemical liquid commonly used in portable restroom sanitation. The blue chemical was found in the baby's trachea, lungs and stomach confirming that she breathed and swallowed the liquid while alive."
Mom 'dropped' newborn in porta potty, left her to drown in the blue chemical liquid: Police
Sonia Cristal Jimenez is accused of giving birth to a baby girl in a New Mexico porta potty and tossing the infant into the toilet where she drowned.
