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.

‘I didn’t know (about the pregnancy),’ he told The New York Daily News last month.

‘I didn’t know any of this. I’ve been cleared of all charges.’

Berry initially denied giving birth when she was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital after she was arrested.

She also refused medical attention.

However, Berry eventually relented, and admitted to a police officer that she thrown her baby out of the window because it wasn’t breathing.

Berry’s first child, a boy, also died shortly after he was born in 2008 in Yonkers.

At the time a medical examiner said he died of natural causes, but prosecutors are now reviewing the case.

In her arraignment on Tuesday, Berry pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, as well as charged of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter.

If convicted she faces 25 years in prison.

According to the New York Times, Berry was a charity worker for the Puerto Rican Family Institute and had also had jobs in child protection.

Source: The DailyMail