Woman admits to killing baby girl, abandoning body in trash bag in Gwangju: police

▲ The mother in her 30s accused of killing and abandoning her newborn in a public trash bin leaves the district court in Gwangju, south of Seoul, after a hearing on her arrest warrant on July 8, 2023. (Yonhap)

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Woman admits to killing baby girl, abandoning body in trash bag in Gwangju: police

GWANGJU, July 14 (Yonhap) -- Police pressed murder charges against a woman originally arrested for abandoning the body of her six-day-old newborn in a garbage bag following her death, after she confessed to deliberately placing the baby face down and letting her die, officials said Friday.

The mother in her 30s turned herself in to police last week after getting a call from a regional government office seeking to check on babies who have medical records of birth but no official birth registration.

She had originally told the police that she left the baby unattended at her home in the southwestern city of Gwangju for three hours in 2018 because she was distressed about raising the child alone, but insisted that the baby was already dead when she came back and threw away her body in a trash bag.

But police became suspicious and grilled her further, as her statements were not consistent, and she ultimately admitted she intentionally placed the baby face down and let her die at a motel she was residing in after giving birth as the baby kept crying.

She was also found to have kept the baby's body in the fridge for two to three weeks before putting it in a trash bag and threw it away in a public trash container near her home, police said.

The police had initially applied charges of child abuse resulting in death, but changed the charges to murder and referred her to the prosecution Friday for further investigation and indictment, officials said.

Police said it would be difficult to find the body because too much time has already passed.

The case marks one of the many shocking child abuse cases disclosed under a nationwide campaign to check the well-being of more than 2,000 undocumented babies born since 2015, following the discovery of the bodies of two unregistered newborns in a home refrigerator last month.

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