In Pennsylvania, a 19-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman have been detained on suspicion of killing their newborn child, allowing him to bleed to death less than a day after his birth, and then throwing his body out of their home’s second-story window.
Following the boy’s murder in March 2024, Joshua Coleman Wooters and Emily Jane Dickinson were placed under arrest this week and charged on one count each of criminal homicide, conspiracy, concealing an infant’s death, and abuse of a body.
Wooters was additionally accused with obstructing a law enforcement function, a misdemeanor count.
In McConnellsburg Borough, Pennsylvania, approximately 160 miles west of Philadelphia, a dead male baby was discovered in the street close to the intersection of North 2nd Street and Lincoln Way.
This information was reported to the Pennsylvania State Police, who released a news release at approximately 8:45 a.m. on March 11.
First responders found the infant victim around 20 feet north of the crossing when they arrived on the scene. The young child was declared dead at the spot, and a garbage bag containing several disposable objects, a placenta, and a bloodstained mattress was discovered close to his body.
According to the report, the Fulton County Coroner’s Office estimated the newborn victim’s gestational age to be between 36 and 37 weeks, and that the infant had been born less than 24 hours before. The baby’s cause of death, as discovered by a later examination, was “exsanguination from the umbilical stump,” or significant blood loss.
A trooper spoke with Wooters while scouring the neighborhood for information on the victim, and the adolescent denied knowing anything about the infant.
Police were led by the inquiry to Wooters and Dickinson’s apartment, whose second-story window faces the location of the child’s discovery.
On April 1, Wooters was questioned by troopers once more, and this time, he denied knowing anything about the baby and declared himself to be a virgin. He even went so far as to spell the word “S-E-X” instead of speaking it, according to the Daily Voice.
Following the execution of a search warrant on April 3, troopers allegedly discovered blood evidence in the couple’s bedroom and bathroom at their residence in the 100 block of Lincoln Way W. The flat was observed to have several windows that provided a view of the location where the newborn was found.
Wooters told investigators that he and Dickinson were the parents of the child and that his “first reaction of something that’s traumatic for me is, um, to lie.” He claimed that Dickinson was too young to be a parent and that she had only revealed her pregnancy to him in February.
“I’m only 19, like, do you really think a person that’s the age of 19 should have a child, no, not at all, they’re too immature,” he reportedly stated.
Wooters testified before authorities that Dickinson “picked up the baby as someone would pick up ‘dog poop,'” cutting the umbilical chord with a kitchen knife and forgetting to knot it afterwards. He alleged that Dickinson then went to the bathroom window and threw the child down to the concrete below from the second story.
Read Also:Â Man Murdered Two Gas Station Employees in Exchange for Lottery Tickets: Authorities
Wooters said that he yelled at Dickinson, “What the f— did you do?” after witnessing the infant thrown out the window. However, he proceeded to throw the mattress and other goods into a garbage bag and out the same window. They did not both dial 911.
On April 11, Dickinson allegedly underwent an interrogation with her lawyer present. According to reports, she gave delivery at home and thought the infant had passed away immediately after she severed the umbilical cord.
She did, however, state that she thought the infant was still moving and wailing because she was having blood loss hallucinations.
Although Dickinson allegedly admitted to authorities that she “wasn’t thinking clearly” and had no sense of time, she claimed to have remembered tossing the placenta and baby out the window.
At the time, she added, she thought the boy was dead. Dickinson added that even though she was a registered nursing assistant, she had never tried to give her newborn CPR.
According to reports, DNA testing confirmed that the newborn victim was Wooters and Dickinson’s child.
Dickinson searched the internet for pregnancy-related terms including “abortion law” and “home birth how long does the bleeding last,” according to a phone search that was conducted on hers.
The Bedford County Jail is presently housing the pair. Since both of them may receive life sentences in jail, their bonds were refused.
