33-year-old mother indicted for dropping newborn from 7th story window after giving birth
33-year-old mother indicted for dropping newborn from 7th story window after giving birth
A New York woman faced court briefly on Tuesday charged with allegedly tossing her newborn baby out the window of a seventh-floor apartment building in the Bronx seconds after giving birth in her boyfriend’s shower.
Jennifer Berry, 33, told police that she had kept her pregnancy a secret – telling her boyfriend and family that she had an abortion months earlier – before delivering and trying to dispose of the child, before going straight back to work on her computer.
‘I put a sanitary pad on and went into the living room and went back on the computer. I was looking for jobs again,’ Berry told police, according to DNA Info.
‘About 20 minutes later, the police were knocking at my door.’
The incident occurred in University Heights on September 28.
Berry, who lives in Yonkers, told police she started having cramps in the morning while staying at her boyfriend’s place, so went into the bathroom and filled the tub with water.
‘I felt a lot of pressure and the baby came out,’ she said.
‘The baby was grayish. I don’t know if the baby was breathing.
‘I would say ”no” because of what I observed.’
However, the medical examiner ruled the child had been born alive and the cause of death was blunt force trauma from the seven-story fall to the concrete below.
Berry told police that she cradled the baby – a girl – for about two minutes before dropping her out the window.
The child landed in the street-level courtyard of the apartment building.
The umbilical cord was still attached.
Berry then cleaned herself, rinsed the tub, tried to hide any other evidence, and resumed what she was doing.
Berry said she told her boyfriend that she was having a heavy menstrual cycle.
‘I got my period regularly. I gained a little weight, but I have a thyroid problem,’ she told police of the secret pregnancy.
Berry’s boyfriend, Giovanni Johnson, 28, who had been in a relationship with her for around a year and a half, said that he had been under the impression she’d had an abortion.