She thought she was throwing out a dead baby.
The disturbed mom charged with tossing her newborn daughter out of a Bronx building believed the infant was stillborn, court papers unsealed at her arraignment Tuesday revealed.
“The baby was grayish. I don’t know if the baby was breathing. I would say ‘no’ because of what I observed,” Jennifer Berry told investigators shortly after her arrest for the Sept. 28 death of her child, authorities said.
Her infant – who did not live long enough to have a name – was unresponsive in her arms after she gave birth in the bathtub of her boyfriend’s W. 183rd Street apartment, Berry told cops.
“I cradled the baby for about two minutes. The baby could have moved. The baby was definitely not crying,” Berry told investigators. “I opened the window and threw the baby out.”
Berry also told police she had had an abortion six months earlier at an East Village Planned Parenthood because she and her boyfriend could not afford to have the baby.
Berry told cops she suffered persistent cramps on the day she was arrested. She said she went to take a bath, “felt a lot of pressure and the baby came out,” authorities said.
Police said at the time of Berry’s arrest that the baby was alive when the woman hurled the newborn from the seventh floor of the University Heights building.
The infant’s umbilical cord was still attached.
As her baby’s body lay in the building’s courtyard, Berry then put on a sanitary pad and continued searching for a job on her boyfriend’s a computer, court papers state. The police came knocking 20 minutes later, Berry told investigators.
Berry had previously lost another infant son, in March 2008 at her home in Yonkers.
Berry’s arrest has prompted Westchester prosecutors to review the circumstances of that death, which had been ruled due to natural causes.
