"Newborn Jane" HIMES - Hours old - Reisterstown (NW of Baltimore) MD

The young Reisterstown woman who police say tossed her newborn baby
from a second-floor window a week ago was in "emotional pain" and showed
"deep concern" about the baby's condition later at a hospital, a doctor
who examined the child said Wednesday.The baby girl, who weighed
about 8.5 pounds at birth and appeared to be full-term, was determined
to have been unhurt when, wrapped in a plastic bag, she was dropped
about 10 feet and landed in a bush outside her mother's home. The child
was discharged from the hospital Wednesday into the care of the
Department of Social Services. A half-dozen callers have already
contacted the hospital offering to adopt her."There was not a
scratch, not a bruise, not a fracture," said Olachi Mezu-Ndubuisi, a
pediatrician in the neonatal intensive-care unit of the Greater
Baltimore Medical Center. She explained the results of a rigorous
examination of the baby after she had been brought to the hospital by
paramedics on the evening of July 22. "I was overwhelmed with relief
that this innocent little girl was fine." A decision on whether to file charges against the child's
21-year-old mother, Rebecca Diane Himes, will be made "shortly," Leo
Ryan, a deputy state's attorney for Baltimore County, said Wednesday. A police report of the incident says that two officers were dispatched
to the Himes home on Virginia Avenue shortly after 9 p.m. and found a
woman holding a child wrapped in blankets. It emerged that the woman,
Laura Smith Himes, 51, was the baby's grandmother, although she told the
officers that she had not known that her daughter was pregnant until
the baby turned up. Rebecca's younger sister, Samantha Nicole
Himes, 18, said she had heard "screams or cries" behind the house. After
going outside, "she observed a trash-style bag and heard the same loud
screams or cries coming from the bag," the police report says. "She ran
toward the front of the house, screaming." The officers noted
that the distance between the window from which the baby is thought to
have been thrown and the hedge that broke her fall was between 10 and 12
feet. "The screen to the bathroom window was also pushed out of the
window and was lying against the rear of the house," the report says. It
adds that there was blood all over the bathroom, including in the
shower. Mezu-Ndubuisi, the pediatrician at GBMC, said Rebecca
Himes had refused to speak with police officers but agreed to speak with
her "because I could help the baby." The doctor said the young woman
did not have pre-natal care, which "put not only the baby's life at risk
but her own life at risk." During the unsupervised birth, which
occurred in a non-sterile environment, any number of problems could have
arisen, the doctor said, not least that Himes "could have bled to
death." Nevertheless, the doctor said, "I don't feel it's my
place — or anyone's place — to judge her." However, Mezu-Ndubuisi
emphasized the protections afforded by Maryland's Safe Haven Law, which
allows mothers to leave babies at hospitals, fire stations or police
stations within 10 days of their birth without being prosecuted, as long
as the children are physically unharmed.

A 21-year-old woman was charged Monday with attempted first-degree
murder after Baltimore County police reported that she threw her newborn
baby out of a second-story window.Rebecca Diane Himes, who later
told a doctor that she had not known she was pregnant before she
delivered the child, was also charged with child abuse and reckless
endangerment in connection with the July 22 incident at her home on
Virginia Avenue in Reisterstown. The full-term baby girl, who appeared
to have been born only seconds before she was discovered crying in a
bush outside the house, was unhurt."After reviewing the details
of the case, the decision to charge was a no-brainer," Baltimore County
State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger said by phone Monday afternoon.
He said his office had instructed police to charge Himes and that a
District Court commissioner had issued a warrant for her arrest.