Mom pleads guilty to killing newborn daughter who was found floating in the water
08/03/2023 1:32 pm PDT
PALM BEACH, Fla. (TCD) -- A judge sentenced a 30-year-old woman to over a decade in prison after she pleaded guilty to killing her newborn daughter five years ago.
According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, on June 1, 2018, a Boynton Beach firefighter was off-duty and boating when he "saw what appeared to be a body floating." The man went closer to the body and confirmed it was a deceased infant girl. The Sheriff’s Office said at the time they did not know the girl’s age or how long she had been in the water.
Officials dubbed the girl "Baby June."
Four years later, in December 2022, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office announced they arrested the girl’s mother, Arya Singh, on a charge of first-degree murder.
WPTV-TV reports Singh pleaded guilty Monday, Aug. 2, to aggravated manslaughter of a child and abuse of a dead human body. She was sentenced to 14 years behind bars and 10 years of probation following her release.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement, "Ms. Singh went to a hotel room alone and gave birth to a child. As a result of her actions or inactions, the baby died. Ms. Singh never called 911, she never sought medical treatment, she never asked for help for her child, and she never dropped the baby off at a fire station."
He continued, "As the child’s mother, under the circumstances she placed herself in, she was the only person who could have saved that child’s life. Instead she disposed of her baby in the Boynton Inlet, in the hopes no one would know what she had done. There must be a consequence for that."
According to the probable cause affidavit, detectives tried contacting mothers in the nearby area who gave birth in May, but "efforts to identify the victim and her parents were exhausted."
Baby June was estimated to be about 2 weeks old when she died.
Detectives spoke with Baby June’s father, who said Singh told him she was pregnant but didn’t give birth. He reportedly did not find out about the pregnancy until after he moved to Tallahassee. However, Singh told the father she "took care of it," and he was not sure if she "actually had an abortion or if he assumed she did."
The father attempted to speak with Singh about the child, but she would not talk to him about it.
In July 2022, investigators began looking into Singh as the suspect and conducted surveillance "to obtain a surreptitious DNA sample from her."
On Aug. 14, 2022, detectives found a discarded coffee cup she used and analyzed it in the crime lab, which determined she was likely Baby June’s mother. GPS data showed Singh traveled to the Boynton Beach Inlet on May 30, 2018, and searched "Boynton Inlet" 574 times in the following days.
On May 31, 2022, she searched "Boynton beach news today" 27 times. Following the news of Baby June’s discovery, she read 64 articles.
Baby June was born alive and Singh never reported her missing, according to the affidavit.
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