Texas seminary student, Natalie Annell Weaver who pled guilty to dumping her newborn baby in a trash can to die at a Christian school dormitory sentenced to five years jail.
A seminary student who left her newborn baby daughter to die in a trash can at a Texas dormitory has been sentenced to five years prison for her child’s ‘horrific and inhumane’ death, prosecutors said.
Natalie Annell Weaver, 21, of Springfield, Missouri, pleaded guilty Wednesday to manslaughter and abuse of corpse charges in the April 2018 birth of her daughter on the campus of the Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, where police responded for a welfare check after a student reportedly went into labor, KTVT reported.
Attending police found dried and wet blood in several places inside the dormitory before finding the body of a female newborn inside a plastic bag in a trash can, Waxahachie police said.
Weaver initially denied giving birth, but investigators said evidence at the scene showed that she had just delivered the girl in a dormitory bathroom at the 2,000-student private Christian university and seminary.
Weaver did not seek any medical assistance for the newborn, who was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, cops said.
‘This was a horrific and inhumane crime,’ Ellis County District Attorney Patrick Wilson said in a statement. ‘It’s both shocking and mind-boggling. And it didn’t have to happen.’
In exchange for her plea, Weaver, who was indicted in October, was sentenced to five years in state prison on the manslaughter count and 400 days for abusing a corpse. The sentences will run concurrently, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Instead of leaving her child to die, Weaver could have dropped her newborn off at a designated safe haven, such as a hospital or fire station, including some options ‘just minutes away,’ Wilson said citing Texas’ Baby Moses Law.
‘She could have avoided prosecution and, more importantly, her baby girl would probably still be alive,’ Wilson’s statement continued. ‘The gift of life is too important to throw away.’
Not immediately clear is why the Christian student declined other recourses for her newborn child….
