Newborn Found Dead in Cemetery Trash Can : Mystery: Police are waiting for an autopsy to pinpoint when and how the infant died and perhaps to provide clues about who is responsible.

A cemetery groundskeeper Friday discovered the body of an abandoned newborn girl in a garbage can alongside a gravestone-lined road at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, police said.

Police are waiting for an autopsy to pinpoint when and how the infant died and perhaps to provide clues about who is responsible. Detectives are also pursuing several leads on women who may have given birth recently but were not later seen with a child.

The infant appears to be no more than a few days old, police said.

“It appears the child could very well have been alive when she was put in the trash can,” Police Lt. John Schaeffer said. “There is physical evidence to suggest that might be the case.”

Schaeffer declined to elaborate, except to say that there are no visible bruises or signs of trauma on the body.

Police have not determined the infant’s race, he added.

The infant could have been in the can on the north end of the 60-acre cemetery for up to two days before she was found Friday about 6:15 a.m., Schaeffer said. Exposure and starvation are among the possible causes of death.

The discovery jarred employees at the cemetery. The shaken groundskeeper who found the body was sent home early.

“It’s a sad, horrible, very unsettling situation,” Forest Lawn Vice President Darin Drabing said. “Nothing like this has ever happened here.”

He added: “When I came to work (Friday) morning, the police were already here, and the area around the body was cordoned off, and now we’re just waiting for police to get back to us. We wish we knew more, but we don’t.”

It was the second newborn found dead and abandoned in Cypress in three weeks. On June 17, a young Cypress mother of three was arrested on suspicion of killing her newborn after the child was found dead in a plastic bag in a closet. The woman had apparently tried to hide her pregnancy, even from her husband, neighbors said.

Friday’s discovery came amid concern from some child-care leaders that abandonment of babies--found both dead and alive--may be on the rise.

Orange County officials were startled last year to find four newborns abandoned in such an affluent region. In Los Angeles, county officials reported four abandoned babies in March alone, a rise over an average of one a month in previous years.

Officials point to drug abuse, unemployment and a lack of affordable child care as potential contributors to the trend.