Police Find Girl Believed to Be Dead Infant’s Mother

A teen-age girl suspected of being the mother of a baby found dead in a restroom at UCI Medical Center here has been located by police and was undergoing psychiatric care at the hospital on Friday, authorities said.

Her identity has not been released because she is a minor, medical center spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.

Hospital administrators and medical center police would say little about the investigation into the case of the dead, newborn girl who was found Thursday by a janitor in a restroom near the hospital’s emergency room.

“We don’t want to release information that might jeopardize the investigation,” Tardiff said.

She also declined to say if the girl suspected of bearing the child had been a patient before giving birth, if indeed she did, why she was undergoing psychiatric care, or whether she has been arrested.

Hospital administrators also said they did not know if the baby was born in the hospital and left to die.

Meanwhile, an autopsy was unable to determine the cause of the baby’s death, a coroner’s investigator said. Further tests will be performed in an attempt to find out if the baby was stillborn or died after birth.

After Thursday’s discovery, hospital administrators immediately sought the public’s help in finding the baby’s mother, but Tardiff on Friday declined to say how police located the teen-ager.

In recent months, the hospital has had to divert expectant mothers to other hospitals because of overcrowding. Even expectant mothers in labor are sometimes not encouraged to stay at the hospital during periods of overcrowding, Tardiff said.

“They’re told it’s not safe to come here and be cared for when there’s overcrowding in obstetrics,” Tardiff explained, noting that the expectant mothers are given maps and directions to other hospitals.

Tardiff said there were no diversions on the day the baby was discovered. However, some women were turned away the day before, she added.