BURBANK : Woman Arrested in Her Baby’s Death

A Burbank woman who leaped from a freeway overpass last November just minutes after police discovered her 10-day-old baby dead was arrested Friday and charged with the boy’s murder, Burbank police said.

Tani R. McCollough, 31, who is still suffering from injuries from her apparent suicide attempt, was being held on a $1-million bond after being arrested at her home, said Lt. Larry Koch. Police believe she suffocated her newborn and then tried to kill herself.

“A combination of physical evidence, statements of involved parties and medical findings led to the murder filing,” Koch said.

Shortly after the Nov. 23 incident in which Colin McCollough died, neighbors reported that Tani McCollough had appeared depressed. Autopsy results on the child were inconclusive. Police speculated that the boy might have died from natural causes and that postpartum depression may have prompted McCollough’s unsuccessful suicide attempt.

Koch said Friday, however, that detectives had pursued the case and recently determined that “it probably was the mother who suffocated the baby.”

The tragic string of events began about 10:06 a.m. that Wednesday, when Burbank officers tried to resuscitate the baby, who had been left at home alone by his mother.

The baby’s father, Jeffrey McCollough, had called authorities after coming home from work as a self-employed roofing contractor and finding the boy bleeding from his mouth.

The infant was rushed to St. Joseph Medical Center and pronounced dead about 10:30 a.m.

Minutes before the boy was pronounced dead, officers received word that a woman had jumped from the Hollywood Way overpass onto the Ventura Freeway.

She turned out to be Tani McCollough, who suffered a fractured neck, skull and wrist.

A man who answered the phone at the McCollough home Friday declined to comment on the arrest.