Investigators Describe Death of Baby Girl as ‘Suspicious’ Pending Autopsy
TRABUCO CANYON — Sheriff’s deputies Thursday were investigating the death of a 3-month-old girl whose 16-year-old mother called 911 from a store phone to say that her baby had stopped breathing.
Paramedics transported the infant to a South County hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Doctors found bruises on the infant’s body, leading investigators to declare the death “suspicious” pending the results of an autopsy, Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said.
“The bruises automatically make it a suspicious death,” he said. “We’re not going to know what we have until they do an autopsy.”
An autopsy is set for today.
Olson declined to release the names of the infant and the mother pending notification of relatives. He said he did not know why the mother called from a phone at an unidentified store in Trabuco Canyon.
Other details were not immediately available. Investigators were interviewing the mother and trying to locate the infant’s father, Olson said.
“The key (to the investigation) will be the autopsy,” he said.
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