An 18-year-old mother who was arrested for allegedly killing her baby last month stood before a judge in Utah’s 4th District Court on Wednesday morning for a hearing on whether she would plead guilty or continue on toward a trial.
Her assigned defense attorney, J. Edward Jones, asked the judge for more time to review the details of the case.
The judge granted his request. The next hearing is set to take place Oct. 25 at 8:30 a.m.
Jones said he didn’t have any comments for the public at the time.
According to the case’s arrest affidavit, the mother had been told by hospital staff that her pre-mature baby boy needed oxygen tanks to survive. After a woman living in the same apartment complex as the mother alerted authorities that the child stopped breathing on Sept. 1, the infant was taken to the hospital, where the mother was once gain told the baby needed supplemental oxygen in order to survive.
Shortly after this hospital visit, the mother began internet-searching questions about killing babies and the prison time for doing so, according to investigators who searched her phone.
After she missed a follow-up appointment for her baby on Sept. 11, deputies were called to perform a welfare check and spent about a week searching for the mother and her baby before finding the mother, who claimed she had sent her child with someone who would give her infant to her family in Mexico.
Investigators were unable to confirm her story.
After more questioning, the mother reportedly said that she had removed the infant’s supplemental oxygen, as she believed it was bothering him. She later realized the infant had died. She said she left his body off of I-80 exit 131, where investigators eventually found him.