Woman Suffocated Newborn Baby with Toilet Paper

A woman visiting a medium-security men's prison in in La Grange, Kentucky has been charged with first-degree murder and concealing the birth of an infant.

Why?

WDRB TV reports:

Kentucky State Police say a mother stuffed toilet paper into the mouth of her newborn baby girl as part of an effort to suffocate the child and conceal its birth.

The incident happened at the Roederer Correctional Complex in LaGrange on Sunday. According to the arrest citation, Ashley N. Cox was visiting an inmate there when she delivered the child in a bathroom and placed the newborn in a trash can.

"It's very clear that this was not accident. (The death) was from direct contact with the mother, Ashley Cox," said Trooper Michael Webb with the Kentucky State Police's Campbellsburg Post.

When corrections officers went to check on Cox in the bathroom, she told them she had a female medical issue but was not in distress. She was taken to a nearby hospital Sunday where officers later discovered she had given birth. The child's body was found hours later by corrections officers.

Ashley was in the restroom for about 10 minutes when corrections officers went in. They said heard no screams and Ashley didn't request their assistance, but once they opened the bathroom stall door and saw the blood they knew something was afoot and they called EMT. Once at the hospital, Ashley told doctors she suffered a miscarriage and was only hemorrhaging. She said she didn't deliver a baby. But when they conducted a search for a fetus, which is standard procedure for a miscarriage, there was none. That's when the hospital alerted the prison that Ashley had given birth to a full-term baby and the infant may be in the trash. She already has a 2-year-old daughter and is going through a divorce. BTW, the man she was visiting in prison is not believed to be the father of the deceased baby.

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