Inset left to right: Avia Cantrell and Camron Baker (Tarrant County Jail). Background: A motel where an infant was found dead in a dumpster in Fort Worth, Texas (Google Maps).
A Texas mom and her boyfriend are facing steep charges after the mother's newborn baby girl died in a motel bathroom and was then thrown away by the boyfriend in a dumpster, local police allege.
Avia Cantrell, 23, stands accused of one count of capital murder of a person under 10 years of age over the infant's death, according to the Fort Worth Police Department. Her boyfriend, Camron Baker, 26, stands accused of one count of abuse of a corpse.
The investigation began on Sunday, Oct. 18, when a homeless woman was dumpster diving and found a dead baby girl who had been thrown away inside a bag outside the Drummers Inn, a budget motel on Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth's Western Hills neighborhood.
Officers arrived around 8:30 p.m. after reports the bag containing the deceased child was found just outside the dumpster, according to a police report obtained by Dallas-based ABC affiliate WFAA.
"Don't put it in a trash can," a motel guest who saw detectives investigating the crime scene told the TV station. "Babies don't go in trash cans at all. You could have given the baby to me. I would have taken the baby and did something like taken it to the hospital or something."
Law enforcement, however, said the child appeared to have been dead for multiple days by the time it was found, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW.
The security camera trained on the dumpster was not working at the time, police said as they continued to collect evidence from outside the motel while requesting the public's assistance with information.
Then came a fortuitous phone call.
The next day, police received a request for a welfare check on Cantrell from her sister, who said the defendant was pregnant and due soon.
The mother, for her part, had a history of unattended or undisclosed pregnancy and childbirth, the sister told police, and she feared the baby belonged to Cantrell, according to law enforcement records cited by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Officers then went to Room 205, where Cantrell had been living for more than two years with Baker and three children, police said.
During an interview with detectives, the woman allegedly confessed to giving birth to the girl in the bathtub, police said. The child was said to be full-term, but the mother said she left the baby face down in the water for some 30 minutes, according to the charging document.
Cantrell said she called Baker while he was at work to tell him about the birth, but the girl was dead by the time he arrived, police said.
The child was kept in a bag for four days near the bathroom toilet while the parents decided what to do, according to the affidavit.
When questioned, Baker told police the couple never called for medical help after he got home because the couple did not want to "catch a case," according to the charging document.
The man said he put the baby in a brown, flowered bag and then threw it into the dumpster, police said.
Cantrell is being detained in the Tarrant County Jail with no bond. Baker is not listed as an inmate as of this writing.
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