New Mexico Woman Charged With Drowning Newborn in Portable Toilet Holding Tank

Las Cruces police say 38-year-old Sonia Cristal Jimenez has been arrested and charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death after allegedly giving birth in a portable toilet at Burn Lake on the night of Feb. 7 and leaving her newborn in the holding tank to drown. Hospital staff at Memorial Medical Center alerted authorities when Jimenez arrived around 10:30 p.m. appearing to have recently given birth but without a baby; officers then found the infant girl dead in the toilet’s waste tank at the park about six miles away. Investigators allege Jimenez cut the umbilical cord and abandoned the child, and an autopsy found blue sanitation liquid in the baby’s trachea, lungs and stomach, indicating she inhaled and swallowed the chemical while still alive. Police say they do not expect to charge Jimenez’s boyfriend, who told them she had simply used the portable toilet and that he was unaware she had delivered a baby. Jimenez is being held without bond at the Doña Ana County Detention Center, and the police chief called the case one of the most heartbreaking and disturbing he has seen in his career, underscoring the extreme end of neonaticide cases that periodically surface in U.S. courts.