US teen Tiona Rodriguez ‘went shopping after killing son’

The following day, Rodriguez was stopped by security at the Victoria’s Secret store in Herald Square for possible shoplifting, and discovered the infant dead inside her bag.

She faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison if convicted. At 14, she went into labour with her first baby before her mother even knew she had conceived a child.

To carry out that plan, the then 17-year-old Rodriguez went to a friend’s house October 16, 2013, delivered in a bathroom, tore the 8-pound boy’s umbilical cord with her hands and asphyxiated him, Ferrari said. The prosecutor said Rodriguez send a text message where she used a vulgarity to describe her son, adding she would “dig a hole” and “put it somewhere”.

Rodriguez’s defense lawyer, Earl Ward, says it’s unclear how far along Rodriguez was when she gave birth. “She was not a panicked teenager who didn’t know what she was doing”, the prosecutor said. She is believed to have delivered the baby in her bathtub at home.

He said his client was a “confused young girl who had no idea what to do with the fetus that was stillborn”, the Daily News reported.

However, prosecutors argued that Rodriguez had attempted to hide pregnancies before. “There is perhaps no victim more defenseless than a newborn child”, District Attorney Cy Vance said. Ward said air in the boy’s lungs could have been a byproduct of decomposing after death.

The baby boy was full term and weighed 8lbs, prosecutors said. Ward said air in the boy’s lungs could have been a byproduct of decomposing after death.

Rodriguez was originally charged for shoplifting a pair of skinny jeans from the Herald Square Victoria’s Secret. Appearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan and addressing the judge in a faint voice, she pleaded not guilty.

Last week, a 15-year-old in Louisville, Kentucky, was charged with smothering her newborn daughter and hiding the body in her purse.