Police on Saturday booked 16-year-old Antonia Lopez into the Douglas County Youth Center, a juvenile detention facility. The charge, treating her as an adult, is expected to be filed this week, according to ABC affiliate KETV7 Omaha.
In a press release on Friday, the Omaha Police Department said a pregnant 16-year-old went into labor and then threw the child out of a window after it was delivered. The Police department says officers responded to the Kellom Knolls Apartment Complex near 25th and Cuming Streets Friday morning at 4:12 a.m.
Police say that when paramedics arrived, the baby’s grandmother was holding the child and administering CPR in the parking lot of the apartment complex. The baby was transported to Creighton University Medical Center where she was formally pronounced dead.
Police were able to offer some clarity on what happened early on Friday morning. The teenager apparently went into labor sometime before dawn, but it is still unclear when the infant was born. At 3:40 a.m. Lopez posted a message on her Facebook page, asking if anyone had a car.
According to police, after posting the message, the baby was allegedly thrown out the window and Lopez then told her mother what she had done. The mother ran outside the apartment and found the baby on the grass near the parking lot. She called 911 and began CPR on the infant.
Lopez was taken to Creighton for a medical evaluation and then transferred to the detention facility on Saturday, reports the Omaha World-Herald.
Lopez’s family are in disbelief, saying they didn’t know she was even pregnant. “It’s caught me by surprise. I just can’t believe it. Stunned,” Grandfather to the teen, John Barcelona, said, adding that he had seen her just days before and had no idea she was carrying a baby.
“She looked like she was well underweight more than anything else, I would’ve never dreamed that she was pregnant,” Barcelona said. “In my head, I just can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.”
Neighbors of the family are having a hard time digesting what happened, says Fox News, most of them saying the family was quiet and kept to themselves, other than to say “Hi” in passing. But Antonia is apparently well-known to juvenile authorities.
A year ago, Antonia Lopez and a friend were accused of stealing cell phones from the local Wal-Mart store and concealing them in a pink purse. Both girls denied they had stolen anything when confronted, even refusing to give their real names.
Their denials continued even after they were taken to the youth center. But one of the cell phones began ringing in the pink purse, and when a staff member answered the phone, it was the mother of one of the girls who identified both of them.
Lopez got six months of probation on charges of “theft by unlawful taking and false information.” She has a juvenile review hearing for that case scheduled for Dec. 15, 2016.
