CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : GARDEN GROVE : No Charges Filed in Newborn’s Death

The Orange County district attorney’s office will not prosecute a 15-year-old high school honor student whose newborn son drowned in a campus toilet minutes after birth. Prosecutors initially had sought to file murder charges against the girl, who gave birth Nov. 28 in a bathroom stall at Santiago High School in Garden Grove, and later considered involuntary manslaughter or child endangerment charges. But after interviewing the girl and consulting with physicians, prosecutors concluded the student was close to blacking out after giving birth and therefore unable to respond to the infant, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Conley said. “The way she described it, she never even thinks of picking up the baby,” he said. The girl apparently never told anyone about her pregnancy and tried to hide her condition under loose-fitting clothing. The girl’s parents only learned of her pregnancy after the birth, authorities said.