3rd Dead Baby Found in Orange County in 4 Days

The body of a baby was found Tuesday inside a cardboard box at a San Clemente apartment complex, making it the third dead infant discovered over the last four days in an Orange County beach city.

Unlike the two infant girls, their umbilical cords still attached, who washed ashore in Newport Beach and Sunset Beach last weekend, the male baby found by the apartment manager had been cared for before it apparently was dumped.

“This is definitely a baby who was taken care of,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Davis, chief of police services in San Clemente. “The baby was clothed and had on a diaper. This was not a baby that was just born and then discarded.”

Investigators determined that the boy was Latino and had been dead for more than 24 hours, but the cause of death was not known and an autopsy was pending.

The infant, less than a week old and weighing 6 pounds 7 ounces, was dressed in an oversized pink sleeper. The box was found in the parking lot of the Meadowlark West apartments. There was a beige blanket over the infant and the umbilical cord was tied off with a red ribbon, authorities said.

“The fact that you got fetal deaths is not that uncommon,” said Supervising Orange County Deputy Coroner Cullen Ellingburgh. “But the fact that they’re being found on beaches and then a third baby is found dead, well, that is very unusual.”

A sheriff’s spokesman said the three incidents, all under investigation, appear unrelated.

Craig Christian, the manager at Meadowlark Apartments who happened upon the child Tuesday, said: “I thought the box was litter and I was going to dump it in the garbage. It felt pretty heavy, so I popped it open. When a baby appeared, I immediately set the box down. I was shocked and dumbfounded.”

The brown stucco apartment complex sits near the southern border of San Clemente, several hundred yards away from President Richard Nixon’s former Western White House.