A 22-year-old woman was arrested by Tokyo police on Wednesday on suspicion of attempted murder after allegedly abandoning her newborn son in a trash bin.
The suspect, Noa Kitagawa, whose address and occupation are unknown, partially denied the charges and said she had no intention of killing the baby.
The baby boy, who is believed to have been abandoned approximately 12 hours after birth, was found anemic and taken to hospital. He is now in stable condition.
Kitagawa is suspected of giving birth in an apartment in the early morning of June 20 and then abandoning him in a garbage bin on the grounds of an adjacent apartment building in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward.
The trash can, made of plastic and about two feet deep, was covered with a lid. The baby, still attached to his umbilical cord and naked, was placed in a plastic bag with a towel, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
A resident of the apartment heard the baby’s cries and alerted authorities around 6:30 p.m. that same day.
According to police, Kitagawa gave birth in the bathroom of her apartment around the 39th week of her pregnancy and immediately threw the baby in the trash. Police quoted her as saying, “I didn’t want anyone to find out, so I threw it away.”
According to the police, she has been living in the apartment with a male acquaintance in his twenties since last fall. The father of the baby is unknown.
Two other women in their 20s were also staying in the apartment, and police are questioning them on a voluntary basis.
Translated by The Japan Times
