Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Polish newborn dies after being thrown from window

A newborn baby girl died after being thrown from a third-story window in the Polish capital, apparently by a drunken relative, police said Tuesday.

The baby was found Monday night, with the umbilical cord still attached, on the sidewalk beneath her family's apartment block in Warsaw's gritty Praga district, police spokeswoman Monika Brodowska said.

Rescuers rushed the baby to the hospital with multiple injuries, but she died soon after, she added.

Police established that the girl had been thrown from a third-floor apartment, but the occupants refused to let them in. Firefighters were called to help officers get in from the balcony, Brodowska said.

Brodowska said officers found a 34-year-old woman in the apartment, identified as Aneta W. Her "state of health signaled that she had just given birth."

The woman was taken to a hospital. The other two people in the apartment — the woman's mother, Lidia L., and husband, Zbigniew W., 40, were both detained.

They were not identified by last name, in keeping with Polish privacy laws.

The death is being treated as a murder, said Renata Mazur, a spokeswoman for regional prosecutors.

All three adults had large amounts of alcohol in their blood and prosecutors are waiting for them to sober up before questioning them to determine who threw the child out the window, Mazur and Brodowska said.
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