Newborn's death a homicide, jury decides

The death of a newborn boy found by his father stuffed in a plastic bag and placed under a bathroom sink was a homicide, a McHenry County coroner's jury ruled today.

The decision, however, will not directly affect whether the McHenry County state's attorney's office brings criminal charges against former Lake in the Hills resident Lyndsey R. Tucker, 26, who police say denied her pregnancy for weeks before secretly giving birth to a live boy.

"I think we all agree that a horrible tragedy occurred, and the coroner's inquest bears that out," First Assistant McHenry County State's Attorney Thomas Carroll said. "What we have to decide is if someone committed a criminal act to cause that tragedy."

The boy, named posthumously William Troia after his father, was found dead July 7 in a Harvard-area apartment shared by Tucker and the elder Troia. The cause of death, Deputy Coroner Paula Gallas said, was asphyxia as a result of obstruction of the mouth and nose by a placenta membrane.

About one in 1,000 babies are born with a similar obstruction, Gallas said, but the membrane can be removed easily to clear the newborn's breathing passage.

McHenry County sheriff's detective William Umbenhower said the boy would have survived had he been born in a hospital or had the membrane pulled away from his face.

"There would have been a 100 percent chance," he said. "A doctor told us all it would have taken was two fingers."

Tucker, who is in federal custody on an unrelated bank robbery charge, has refused to speak with investigators about the birth.

"She has admitted to having the baby, but as far as what occurred leading up to it, what occurred in the bathroom, she will not talk about it," Umbenhower said.

DNA testing later confirmed that the boy was the son of Tucker and Troia, he said.

But for weeks leading up to the birth, according to Umbenhower's testimony before the coroner's jury, Tucker repeatedly denied being pregnant when questioned by Troia, her mother and others. Instead, she blamed her weight gain on prescription drugs she was taking to address her history of bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

On the night before the boy's birth, Umbenhower said, Tucker told Troia she was suffering from severe menstrual cramps and asked him to sleep on a living room couch instead of their bed. He complied but throughout the night heard Tucker awaken to use the bathroom and take showers.

After hearing her get up several times, Umbenhower said, Troia went into the bathroom to check on Tucker. He found her standing in the shower with blood running down her legs.

Concerned that she was having a medical emergency, Troia called 911 and an ambulance crew took Tucker from the apartment to Centegra Memorial Medical Center in Woodstock. Doctors there, Umbenhower said, determined that Tucker had given birth and sent Troia home to look for a baby.

Troia found the boy in a brown plastic bag tucked away in a cabinet under the bathroom sink. He placed the boy in a soft-sided cooler and brought him to the hospital, where doctors determined he had been alive at birth.

Carroll said today that there is no timeline for a decision on possible charges against Tucker.

In the meantime, Tucker is scheduled to appear Thursday in U.S. District Court in Rockford on bank robbery charges stemming from February stickups at banks in Algonquin and Lake in the Hills.

A federal court allowed Tucker to go free and move in with Troia shortly after she was charged with those robberies. She was ordered back into federal custody after the discovery of the dead newborn and remains there today.