Woman whose baby found dead charged in his death
A former Lake in the Hills woman whose newborn son was found dead, stuffed in a plastic bag and placed under a bathroom sink last year was indicted Wednesday for involuntary manslaughter and concealment of a homicide, a law enforcement official said.
The charges, both felonies, allege Lyndsey R. Tucker, 26, made no efforts to keep the boy alive immediately after she secretly gave birth July 7 in the Harvard-area apartment she shared with the infant's father.
"The investigation revealed that Lyndsey Tucker delivered a healthy baby boy, and her inaction after the delivery caused the death of this child," McHenry County Sheriff's Lt. Donald Carlson said.
If found guilty, Tucker could face up to 14 years in prison.
She currently is in federal custody while awaiting trial on bank robbery charges stemming from a pair of holdups in Algonquin and Lake in the Hills that occurred in February, about five months before the baby's birth. She had been free on bond in July but was ordered back to a federal lockup after the boy's death.
The boy, posthumously named William Troia after his father, was found dead after Tucker was rushed to a hospital for severe bleeding. The cause of death was asphyxia due to obstruction of the mouth and nose by a placenta membrane, the McHenry County coroner's office said.
About one in 1,000 babies are born with a similar obstruction, but the membrane can be removed easily to clear the newborn's breathing passage, according to testimony from a coroner's inquest in November. Had the membrane been removed, authorities said, the boy would have survived.
"Her failure to remove the obstruction from the baby's face was a contributing factor in the death," Carlson said.
Police said Tucker repeatedly denied being pregnant to Troia, her mother and others around her in the months leading up to the boy's birth. She blamed her weight gain on prescription drugs she was taking for bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
On the night before the birth, police said, Tucker told Troia she was suffering from severe menstrual cramps and needed him to sleep on a living room couch instead of their bed.
He complied, but throughout the night heard Tucker get up to use the bathroom and take showers, according to testimony at the coroner's inquest. Concerned for her well-being, Troia went to check on her and found her standing in the shower with blood running down her legs, police said.
Investigators said Troia called an ambulance, which transported Tucker from the apartment to Centegra Memorial Medical Center in Woodstock. Doctors there determined that Tucker had given birth and sent Troia home to look for a baby.
Troia found the boy, police said, 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.