A 22-year-old woman was arrested Wednesday by Tokyo police 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, stating she did not intend to kill the baby.
The baby boy, believed to have been abandoned for about 12 hours shortly after birth, was found anemic and taken to a hospital. He is now in stable condition.
Kitagawa is suspected of giving birth to the baby in an apartment in the early hours of June 20 and then abandoning him in a trash bin located on the premises of an adjacent apartment building in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward.
The trash bin, made of plastic and about 60 centimeters deep, was covered with a lid. The baby, still attached to his umbilical cord and naked, was placed inside a plastic bag with a towel, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
An apartment resident heard the baby’s cries and alerted authorities around 6:30 p.m. the same day.
According to police, Kitagawa gave birth at around 39 weeks of pregnancy in her apartment’s bathroom and placed the baby in the trash bin immediately afterward. Police quoted her as saying, “I didn’t want anyone to find out about it, so I threw him away.”
She is believed to have been living with a male acquaintance in his 20s in the apartment since around last fall, police said, adding that the baby’s father is unknown.
Two other women in their 20s were also staying in the apartment, and police are questioning them on a voluntary basis.