A judge granted bond on Friday for a 19-year-old Florida college student accused of killing her newborn child and putting her body in a trash can in April.
Brianna Moore, a University of Tampa student, was arrested last month and charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child, child neglect with great bodily harm, failure to report a death, and unlawful storage and preservation of human remains, WFLA reported.
Her bond was set at $262,500.
The baby girl was found dead on April 28 in a bathroom at McKay Hall, a dormitory for freshman students on the University of Tampa campus. as CrimeOnline previously reported. WFLA reported that Moore’s roommates had called campus security the day because they thought they heard a baby crying in a first floor dorm room.
Paramedics found blood in the shared bathroom, but Moore told them that it was from her menstrual period. Police returned to the dorm the next day when students found a suspicious item, which was “a deceased fetus in a [trash] bag.”‘
“University of Tampa security officer … looked inside the bag and observed the torso of a baby,” Tampa police wrote in their report. “It was apparent that the baby was deceased and beyond help.”
At the time, Moore told police she didn’t know she was pregnant but investigators noted she may have been in denial about the pregnancy. She said she had not had a period in a about a year. She told police that she began to feel sick and gave birth in the bathroom. Moore said the baby cried “approximately five seconds,” but stopped when she brought the girl up to her chest.
“Several minutes” later, she said she checked for a pulse and found none.
Police continued to investigate the incident, and Moore was arrested on October 18. An autopsy found the infant had several fractured ribs and a hemorrhage in her lungs — and Moore admitted she held the child tight against her until she stopped crying.
Florida has a safe haven law that allows parents to anonymously surrender unharmed newborns at certain facilities.
