By Valerie Schremp Hahn
March 19, 2014
STL
ST. LOUIS • A teenager from the O’Fallon neighborhood in north St. Louis was charged Tuesday with abandonment of a corpse, a felony, after police say she gave birth to a baby and abandoned it in a trash bin.
The infant girl was found dead by paramedics Thanksgiving morning. She was dead at the time of delivery earlier that morning, court documents say.
Lucretia Jordan-Smith, 18, of the 4200 block of Red Bud Avenue, could face up to four years in prison for the charge. Bail was set at $10,000.
Paramedics recovered the baby in the trash in an alley behind her apartment building near Fairground Park. The baby was wrapped in two plastic grocery bags and a larger trash bag. A paramedic told a detective his crew responded after a 911 call. A young woman reported that a friend had called her, and the friend said she had just given birth and had put the baby in the trash bin. Jordan-Smith admitted to police she had wrapped the infant in the bags and put the baby in the bin.