MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Authorities are investigating after they say a Minneapolis woman gave birth to a boy in her bathroom, kept his body in her room and later brought him to her mother’s home in Winona, Minn.
The Minneapolis Police Department’s Homicide Unit is looking into the case.
Court documents say Winona police first heard of the boy’s death on April 10, when they responded to the Women’s Health Clinic on a call of a dead baby brought by its mother. When police met with the clinic’s staff, they told authorities Kristin Bennett came with her mother and the baby to the clinic.
Staff said Bennett told her mother she delivered the baby herself into her apartment’s toilet bowl. She reportedly said she heard the baby cry once and then stop. She rubbed the boy’s back, trying to get him to breathe. It was not successful.
Bennett cut the umbilical cord and threw it away in her apartment’s trash can. She also took photos of the baby and uploaded them to her computer, staff said.
After she realized the baby was dead, Bennett wrapped him in a sweatshirt, put him in a plastic container and kept the boy in her room.
Bennett told her mother she didn’t know she was pregnant and only went to the bathroom because she felt sick, staff said.
Bennett brought the boy to her mother’s home on April 9, the day before they went to the clinic. It is not clear how long the boy’s body stayed in his mother’s room.
On April 13, Minneapolis police received authority to search Bennett’s apartment, located on the 2100 block of Como Avenue Southeast, for baby and pregnancy related things, video and photos, baby toys and supplies, body fluids, cutting instruments and other documents.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy on the boy. A cause of death has not yet been determined.
