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Baby’s body found at garbage site

DEAN J. KOEPFLER/The News Tribune   
Investigators from several police agencies watch Monday as Pierce County coroners retrieve the body of a baby boy from 60 tons of garbage at the LRI landfill in Graham. The investigators say the baby was born in Port Angeles, that he was killed, and his body was put in a trash can. A woman saw it there and went to police.
Published: 01/06/09  12:05 am
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The body of a baby boy believed drowned in a toilet was found Monday by authorities combing through 60 tons of trash at a dump site in Graham, and a teenager believed to be the mother was held on $500,000 bail.

Investigators from Port Angeles police, Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, Tacoma police and a Washington State Patrol crime laboratory spotted the tiny body about 2:10 p.m. as heavy equipment was used to comb through the partially compacted garbage.

The 16-year-old girl “put her baby face down into a toilet and allowed it to drown for several minutes until it died. Then she threw her son into the trash can outside in a plastic garbage bag,” Port Angeles police Detective Jesse Winfield wrote in an affidavit filed Monday in Clallam County Superior Court.

The affidavit did not elaborate and Winfield was out of his office late Monday.

An autopsy was pending, and DNA testing to confirm the infant’s parentage might not be available for a month or more, Port Angeles police Chief Terry Gallagher said.

In a brief hearing Monday in Clallam County Superior Court, bail was set at $500,000 for a 16-year-old girl who remained in juvenile detention for investigation of first- or second-degree murder.

Prosecutor Deborah S. Kelly said a hearing on charges against the girl was scheduled Wednesday. She will be charged as an adult, Kelly said.

Bail was set at $10,000 for her father, Ronald Last Jr., 41, who was charged Monday with being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of methamphetamine, both felonies, and with concealing a birth, a gross misdemeanor, the prosecutor added.

He remained in the Clallam County jail.

Last has an extensive court record with civil and criminal cases dating from 1985 in King, Snohomish, Kitsap and Clallam counties, Gallagher said.

Information on his felony conviction or convictions was not immediately available, but Gallagher said, “We’ve dealt with him for years.”

Police in Port Angeles believe the baby boy died after being born to the girl early Tuesday and was put in trash that was picked up the next day.

Garbage from Wednesday’s pickup was in two containers that initially were taken to a transfer station in Tacoma for transshipment to Oregon, Waste Collections Inc. officials said.

But the containers were rerouted to the Graham landfill where there was more room to conduct the search.

Gallagher told The Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles that a woman came to the police station Friday and said she had seen a baby in a trash can in an alley behind the girl’s house, but the can was empty when officers arrived.

“This is a very sad case,” Gallagher told the newspaper. “I think it is particularly tragic that this girl had so little support that she wasn’t able to recognize any other option than what happened.”

He said investigators believe the girl delivered the baby at the home about 3 a.m. Tuesday. She was provided with medical care before she was incarcerated.

“I don’t believe that she had any medical care before we took her into custody,” Gallagher said.

During a search of the home, police found a gun and what first appeared to be a pipe bomb but turned out to be a device that can be attached to the bottom of a car for transporting illegal drugs, “a fairly common method,” he said.

Four other men and several other juveniles also lived at the house, he added.

The 16-year-old moved from Pueblo, Colo., where her mother lives, to her father’s home in Port Angeles in October. Law enforcement in Pueblo has been contacted, and investigators have determined that the father of the baby “is an adult, not a minor,” Gallagher said.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
 

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