Police say that an Iowa woman on Sunday gave birth to a baby, tried to flush it down the toilet and then leave it in a trash can.
The woman, 22-year-old Ashley R. Hautzenrader, was arrested after police learned of the incident and charged with child endangerment.
The incident played out on Sunday when Hautzenrader entered a bathroom at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics just before 9:30 p.m. and gave birth to a baby, according to a police report. She was apparently unaware of the fact that she was pregnant prior to giving birth and believed it was a stillbirth since the baby was not crying, prompting her to try and flush it down the toilet.
When this failed, she put the baby in a pillowcase, left it in a trash can and then cleaned the bathroom before leaving, police said. UHC employees entered the bathroom soon afterwards and found the child in the trash right where Hautzenrader left the infant.
The authorities were contacted, and upon talking to Hautzenrader, they learned that she left the baby inside the trash because she believed it had died.
Due to federal patient privacy laws, authorities were unable to disclose whether Hautzenrader or the baby were patients at the hospital or what the child's current condition is. Furthermore, since Hautzenrader alleged that she wasn't aware of her pregnancy prior to giving birth, its unclear what led her to go to the hospital in the first place. The gender of the baby is also unknown.
What we do know, however, is what the results of this incident were. For trying to flush her child down the toilet and leaving it inside of a trash can, Hautzenrader was charged with child endangerment, which is an aggravated misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison. She has since been released from the Johnson County Jail to the Iowa Department of Corrections on pretrial supervision.
Jail administrator Bill Deatsch noted that pretrial supervision is similar to probation, requiring Hautzenrader to check in with the department every so often and not have any other law infractions.
