Prosecutors in eastern Pennsylvania plan to seek the death penalty in the trial of a woman accused of giving birth in a sports bar bathroom, wrapping the newborn in a plastic bag and hiding him in a toilet tank.
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said Wednesday that 27-year-old Amanda Hein of Allentown deserves to be executed because she killed a child.
A cleaning crew found the baby's body in the toilet on Aug. 19 at Starters Pub in Bethlehem, about 30 miles north of Philadelphia. A coroner concluded the boy was born alive.
Her public defender, Michael Corriere, said he expected that prosecutors would seek the death penalty. He didn't comment further. (Copyright ©2013 WPVI-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
An autopsy found the baby was born alive, the Northampton County coroner said.
In an interview with police, the 26-year-old Allentown woman admitted giving birth to the baby boy in the restroom a night earlier, wrapping him in a plastic bag from a garbage container and placing him in the toilet tank, court documents said.
District Attorney John Morganelli said Hein was watching a pay-per-view wrestling event with several other people when she complained of back pain and excused herself.
One of the men told police she was gone for a long time before returning to the table, getting her purse and going outside to smoke. The man said he saw that she was bleeding and asked if she needed to go to the hospital, but she told him she didn't have insurance and he dropped her off at her house.
Hein told police that no one else knew she was pregnant or that she had given birth in the bathroom, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Parents who do not wish to raise a newborn child can anonymously turn the baby over to any hospital in Pennsylvania.
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