Baby found dead amid horrific scene
EDITOR'S NOTE: Article contains graphic content.
HOBBS, N.M. Hobbs police responding to a call of an unresponsive child Sunday afternoon found a scene much worse.
At a home in the 1300 block of East Green Acres Drive described as disorderly and intensely foul-smelling, officers discovered a newborn dead on the floor and a mentally ill mother still covered in blood in another room.
According to case reports, officers first checked on the 25-year-old woman after the woman’s 23-year-old sister informed them the infant was dead in another room.
They reported finding the woman nude in the fetal position with the umbilical cord still connected to her, with her hands and groin smeared with dried blood and the mattress and a nearby sheet soaked with blood and other fluids and swarming with flies.
Officers said they then went to the other bedroom to check on the infant.
“Don’t step on the baby,” they reported the woman's sister warned them.
Officers said they discovered a small infant face down and covered by a washcloth and plastic wrapper, surrounded by clothing, trash and flies.
One of the officers returned to ask the woman if she’d had a baby.
“I didn’t have a (expletive) baby,” the woman told the officer, the only thing reports indicated she said.
Hobbs EMS and more police officers arrived at the scene, and the woman was transported to Lea County Regional Hospital where a doctor examined her and the woman's second sister, a 24-year-old who was also a nurse there, was contacted.
The sisters’ 50-year-old mother, also reportedly mentally ill, lived at the home as well, and told officers she had seen a live baby earlier in the week, perhaps July 15, but she wasn’t sure of the day.
The woman’s 24-year-old sister said when she brought food to the home two weeks earlier, she hadn’t realized the woman was pregnant because the woman was facing away from her. The sister said the woman appeared not to have been taking her prescribed bi-polar and schizophrenia medicine.
The woman was transported to the hospital’s mental health facility in the early morning hours of Monday.
The woman has not yet been charged with any crime, Hobbs police spokesman Mike Stone said.
