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Last month, we wrote about an especially horrific case in which the body of an abandoned newborn baby was found in a plastic bag, stuffed in a toilet tank in a restaurant restroom in Lower Saucon Township, Pennsylvania (“Mother charged with criminal homicide after dumping newborn baby into toilet tank”)

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On Monday Amanda Catherine Hein was in court before District Judge David W. Tidd. The 27-year-old Hein faces a homicide charge, according to reporter Sarah M. Wojcik.

“Hein sat silently in court, wearing a red prison jumpsuit,” Wojcik wrote for the Express Times. “She kept her head down through the entire proceeding, ducking it lower during particularly upsetting testimony.”

In testimony given by a township police officer and by Zachary Lysek, the Northampton County Coroner, the court heard that Hein had “detailed the birth and death of the baby boy after being picked up Aug. 20 at her Allentown apartment.” She could not explain either why she killed the baby—other than that she “was scared”—or why she didn’t place the baby someplace where he would be found.

Lysek testified that Hein told him she placed the baby in a small bag she’d found in a trash receptive in the toilet stall, after separating the umbilical cord from the child. “She explained that the child was still, then she cried out, ‘He was alive,’” Lysek testified.

In earlier stories appearing in the New York Post and the Express Times, we learned that the baby was discovered by a member of the late-night cleaning crew when they noticed the toilet was not functioning and opened it to see what was wrong.

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In the initial story that ran in the Express Times, Wojcik extensively quoted the visibly shaken owner, David Rank, who said his “biggest concern is the employees, the mother and the baby. … Pray for the mother and the baby until we find out exactly what’s going on. You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

Louiseann Hein, Amanda Hein’s stepmother, was interviewed by the Post. She “sobbed when she learned the horrific details. She didn’t know Amanda was expecting, but recalled seeing a letter from Planned Parenthood addressed to her,” the Post reported.

Speaking with The Morning Call newspaper, Louiseann Hein said, “I told her she always had a home here.

We would make room. Would find a way.

Reprinted with permission from NRLC