A 26-year-old pregnant woman from Pennsylvania was at a bar drinking when she went into labor on Aug. 17. Instead of going to the hospital, she went to the bathroom, delivered the baby boy herself, wrapped the newborn in a plastic bag and then put the child down the tank of the toilet.
Amanda Catherine Hein returned to her seat 40 minutes later with blood on her clothes. When her friends asked what happened, she said nothing and that everything was fine, according to an Associated Press report. Police say Hein went outside and smoked a cigarette, then returned to her friends and continued watching the match.
The next morning, a janitor who checked on the toilet after customers said it would not flush, found the child wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, submerged in the tank behind the toilet seat. The incident occurred at Starters Pub in Bethlehem, about 30 miles north of Philadelphia. Hein was arrested Monday and held without bail on one count of criminal homicide in the death of her baby last week.
Authorities said the baby boy was at 33 to 36 weeks gestation and was born alive, according to The Lehigh Valley Express-Times. The baby boy's death has been ruled a criminal homicide from suffocation, Hein could face the death penalty if found guilty as charged.
Hein said she realized she was pregnant in May or June, but did not tell anyone. None of her friends who were with her the night she gave birth knew that she was carrying a child.
They also did not know she had gone into labor on August 17.
Watch a video below of Dave Rank, owner of Starters Pub in Lower Saucon Township, describing how a cleaning crew found a fetus in the tank of a toilet inside a bathroom at the restaurant on Monday.
