New Mexico
Alarming video captures moment New Mexico nurses find newborn in trash
Distressing footage captured the moment New Mexico nurses discovered the body of a newborn at the bottom of a trashcan, where its teenage mother tossed it and left it to die.
Alexee Trevizo, 19, was charged last month with first-degree murder, or alternatively abusing a child resulting in death, and tampering with evidence after secretly delivering her baby boy in a bathroom at Artesia General Hospital on Jan. 27.
She had checked into the hospital complaining of back pain, hiding her pregnancy from her mother and doctors even as she was actively in labor.
Hospital security footage shows Trevizo running out of her room toward a hallway bathroom while clutching her bum shortly after 1:30 a.m.
Her mother briskly followed hot on her daughter’s heels but Trevizo would not allow her inside the bathroom either time she tried knocking on the door.
Nurses also waited outside the bathroom — finding it suspicious that the teen had locked herself inside for “quite a while.”
After 20 minutes of waiting, one nurse is seen walking a set of keys to the bathroom in order to get to Trevizo, but the girl opened the door just seconds before the hospital staffer was able to burst in, the videow shows.
Inside, nurses found her cleaning a heavy amount of blood from the floor.
A custodian who was called to clean up the mess — which doctors originally thought was from Trevizo attempting to terminate her pregnancy — discovered a bloodied garbage bin that seemed out of the ordinary.
She alerted a nearby nurse, who peered inside the trash and pulled back the liner, revealing the body of a newborn boy.
They both quickly jump back as other staff swarm to confirm that the infant was no longer breathing.
The chilling discovery left the custodian heartbroken. Several nurses can be seen in the video consoling her in the following moments as staff race to call the police.
Trevizo — who had previously denied ever having sex despite her positive pregnancy results — admitted that she tossed the newborn as soon as she was confronted by police.
“I’m sorry. It came out of me and I didn’t know what to do,” Trevizo said in previously released Artesia police bodycam footage.
“I was scared,” Trevizo said before telling nurses that “it was not crying or nothing.”
Trevizo’s mother appeared shocked and angry at the lengths her daughter had gone to hide her pregnancy.
“Lexee, have you watched the news about what the girls do to their babies and they go to jail?” the frustrated mother yelled.
Though the teenager remained adamant that the baby appeared to have been stillborn, the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator later determined that the baby died by homicide.
Her attorney, Gary Mitchell, previously said that Trevizo has no criminal record and should not be facing a murder charge.
Mitchell said there are “major discrepancies about what happened” in the hospital and “this isn’t a classic child abuse case.”
Trevizo has since been released from jail and was permitted to finish the school year without an ankle monitor or house arrest while she waits to stand trial.