US mother drops newborn to death from Paris hotel window

PARIS:A newborn baby died in Paris Monday after his 18-year-old American mother threw him out a hotel window, umbilical cord still attached, French prosecutors and a police source said.

She threw the infant from the second-floor window of a hotel in the 20th arrondissement in eastern Paris, the prosecutor’s office said.

“The newborn was given emergency care but did not survive,” prosecutors said.

The baby died at 7:45 am (0645 GMT) at the Robert Debre hospital, a police source told AFP.

Police had been alerted after an infant wrapped in a cloth, with its umbilical cord still attached, had been discovered in front of the hotel, the police source said.

The mother, an 18-year-old American student, had given birth in a room on the second floor of the hotel and then thrown her child out of the window, according to the source.

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French officials said they had launched a murder investigation, adding that the young woman — who was “part of a group of young adults travelling in Europe” — had been taken into custody.

The mother was taken to hospital where she was to undergo treatment following her delivery, the prosecutor’s office reported.

Paris Match, citing its own information, reported the child’s mother was on a study trip to Paris with other students from the United States.

Abandoning unwanted children is common in countries with abortion restrictions or stricter laws against premarital sex. Unmarried woman who conceive a child unwantedly especially in Muslim countries secretly deliver their children and abandon them immediacy.

However, killing them in cold blood especially in the developed part of the world is gravely concerning.

During the last two weeks, two newborns were found abandoned in separate incidents in Punjab, highlighting a growing social crisis. 

According to a journalist in Chakwal, a passerby walking his dog discovered a newborn lying on a garbage dump in Attock’s Dharnal village.

The infant was found in distress, but no further details about their condition were available. 

A day earlier, a newborn girl was left wrapped in a blanket at the gate of a mosque in Chakwal’s Bhon village.

According to police, the mosque’s muezzin found the infant when he arrived for Fajr prayers and immediately informed authorities.

The baby was taken to Kallar Kahar Hospital, from where a Child Protection Bureau team from Rawalpindi shifted her to Lahore’s child nursery.