Photo: Blackfoot Police Department
An 18-year-old Idaho resident, Angel N. Newberry, was arrested after a deceased newborn was discovered in a Safe Haven Baby Box at the Grove Creek Medical Center in Blackfoot, Idaho. The arrest comes over a month after the infant was found on October 13.
The Safe Haven Baby Box is designed to allow parents to safely and anonymously surrender a newborn under 30 days old without legal repercussions, provided the child is unharmed. However, the Blackfoot Police Department stated in a news release that the placement of a harmed or deceased infant is not protected under this system or Idaho law.
According to a news release from Safe Haven Baby Boxes, the newborn girl was removed from the box "within a minute" after a medical team responded to an alarm notifying them that an infant had been placed there. It was later determined that the newborn had been dead long before she was placed in the baby box.
Newberry was arrested for failure to report a death to law enforcement and the coroner and was booked into the Bingham County Jail. The police have stated that due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation and the potential for further criminal charges, they are limited in the information they can provide.