GUILTY FL - Lakeland girl, 14, charged with killing newborn son, 19 Sept 2012

[LisaB]

She looks like a normal young high school kid. No red eyes from crying. She looks rather cold to me. Made me wonder if she could do this at 14 what would she be doing at 24 or 34? I'd like to know more about what her life has been like up to the time she did this.

She looks rather cold to me, too. But I kind of connect with her because back in my time, when I was 14, it would be HORRIFIC to be pregnant.(snip)

Kind of wonder if she might be traumatized, and even grief-stricken. Now that her mom KNOWS about the baby, it negates her having "needed' to get rid of it. How awful for her.

 

[LisaB]

:twocents:

~snip~she is a very petite person.

All my remarks are simply leading up to IMHO ... the mother had to know this 14-yr old was pregnant and about to deliver. ~snip~

Her mom had her take 2 pregnancy tests in order to "prove" to the busybodies who were gossiping that she was not pregnant. The mother TRUSTED her daughter and did not watch her do the test. She did not realize the girl ran water over the test stick and got a negative result. Mom was apparently either suspicious or just trying to shut up the gossips, but with negative test results, she convinced herself her daughter was just putting on weight.

 

[LisaB]

The results are certaintly equal.
As I stated previously, until and unless some mitigating factors come out (and I pray that there are), this girl killed an innocent person. This wasn't a shoot-out with a cop, or a shopkeeper during a stick-up, it was an infant. Premeditated or on impulse, she has demonstrated she is dangerous.
JMO

OK, I have to add another thought. If she was, as suggested, fully aware of her actions and the repercussions of same, she HAD TO REALIZE that giving birth alone to a large baby at 14 was putting her own life in danger. If she had been fully cognizant of her options, I'd think the LOGICAL answer would have been for her to pick up a phone and call 911 when the delivery was imminent, and let the chips fall where they may. It is actually pretty amazing she did not bleed to death.

I also wonder if she was aware of the applicable time limits for abortion. I don't think she would have thought it was okay to kill a fully born baby, but since the placenta was still inside and the baby was outside, she might have somehow believed he was still a part of her body and it was her right to choose to do what she did. I don't mean it is right AT ALL, just that a child entering high school just weeks prior to the delivery may not have been well-versed in the concept of partial birth abortion, etc. or realized that what she did was FAR beyond the scope of an abortion.

 

[LisaB]

The girl knew she would be giving birth yet, apparently, she didn't have ANY kind of a plan in place. What kind of idiot doesn't think about what's going to happen next? So then, at the last moment she runs into the bathroom and uses scissors on the newborn! Duh!

Another random thought. At 13-14 when she conceived, she may have only had sex ONE TIME. This would jibe with her being able to keep the father of the baby from noticing her condition. Based on that date, her lack of periods, and weight gain, she presumably knew not only THAT she was pregnant, but WHEN it happened. Now, LOTS of ADULT women are surprised to learn that gestation is 40 weeks... closer to 10 months than 9. A girl her age may have somehow thought she could will herself not to be pregnant, and when 9 months had passed, managed to convince herself it was something ELSE causing her symptoms. I don't know why this popped into my head, but she may have been is SUCH DENIAL when 9 months came and went without a baby that she really was surprised when she gave birth. Her description of the delivery doesn't really even make it clear she knew that she was in LABOR.

 

[LisaB]

People thought she was pregnant and she denied it, apparently to the extent of falsifying pregnancy tests.

People thought she had been raped, "but the girl denied this"..... something very material to this case hasn't been answered here. How did she get pregnant? The fact that she's denying rape doesn't mean a damn thing, because she denied pregnancy too.

Further investigation needed on that issue definitely, lest a child rapist be let free to wander around finding other young girls to prey on.

I believe the lacerations from the scissors and the blood from childbirth was what led them to think she was violently raped just prior to being admitted, and she denied having been raped at that time. I don't believe she was saying she had not been raped 39 weeks prior, just not THEN.