Confesses to tossing her newborn infant girl into a Florida inlet
Arya Singh, a 29-year-old Indian American woman is being charged with first-degree murder after she confessed to tossing her newborn infant girl into a Florida inlet four years ago.
“She’s the mother, and she is solely responsible,” Palm Beach County Detective Brittany Christoffel said at a press conference on Dec 15, Miami Herald reported.
It was an off-duty Boynton Beach firefighter who found the body of ‘Baby June’ floating in the Atlantic Ocean not far from shore on June 1, 2018.
Read: Indian American Nausheen Rahman gets 12 years for killing her newborn baby (December 13, 2017)
“The men and women in law enforcement always think they’re tough and they’ve seen it all,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Rich Bradshaw was quoted as saying.
“But I guarantee you when you see an infant—a newborn infant, floating in the ocean that somebody has discarded like a piece of trash—it tugs at your heart.”
Forensic specialists were at a loss to solve the case for several years, until a potential relative turned up in a national DNA database. That led to a potential father, who cooperated with an investigation that eventually led to Singh.
The 29-year-old confessed to the crime soon after being taken into custody, adding that she hadn’t even known she was pregnant until she gave birth, Palm Beach County officials said.
“This young unidentified child was found floating in the ocean off Boynton Inlet and was gut-wrenching to all of us in the community,” said Capt. Steve Strivelli who was then a Sheriff’s deputy.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said Singh is being charged with first-degree murder.
Detectives cited by Herald said that Singh told them she had not known she was pregnant until she delivered the baby, and did not know if the baby was alive or dead at birth.
“By the time the baby went into the inlet she was already deceased,” Christofell said at Thursday’s news conference. “She just said she didn’t know what to do with her and she just decided that that’s where she was going to dispose of her.”
The sheriff’s office crime lab, using DNA, had obtained information about a potential father before learning the mother’s identify. “The father was very cooperative,” Christofell said.
“He knew nothing about this baby. He said that he had a girlfriend around that time that told him that she had been pregnant but had taken care of it. He was thinking she had an abortion. He ended up being the father. We had the DNA tested and we learned he was the father.
“So now we had a suspect as to the possible mother and we were able to obtain a covert DNA sample from her and confirm that she was the mother.”
Detectives found a piece of garbage Singh had discarded and used that to capture her DNA, Christofell said.
Singh chose the ocean inlet, detectives learned, because “she liked the area,” Christofell said. Singh said she did not discuss her plans with anyone beforehand, investigators said. Singh also searched news articles that appeared hours after the baby was found on June 1, 2018, according to detectives.
Read: Mother of ‘Baby June’ arrested for tossing newborn into Florida inlet in 2018 (Decemeber 15, 2022)
“She never came forward at the time,” Christofell said, adding that Singh confessed to detectives after she was arrested on Thursday.
“The death of Baby June was a terrible tragedy for our community four years ago. And it was compounded by the fact that we could not hold anyone accountable right away. This case became cold,” Aronberg said.