DeKalb medical examiner is conducting autopsy on baby found in storm drain

By Rhonda Cook and Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The DeKalb County Medical Examiner's office is conducting an  autopsy on a newborn who died after his parents abandoned him in a storm sewer.

Deputy Medical Examiner John Henson said the autopsy should be completed late Friday afternoon.

Prosecutors say  those findings will determine if more charges will be brought against Sinead A. Harrison, 18, and her boyfriend, 19-year-old Landis Bernard Stewart-Moore.

Orzy Theus, spokesman for DeKalb District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming, said so far the  two are only charged with felony child cruelty.

"We're doing interviews and we have to wait on autopsy results,  which will determine the next course of action if there are going to be any changes in the charges," Theus said. "We have to see where the evidence takes us. "

Both are being held in the DeKalb  County jail on $50,000 bonds, which were set when the two appeared in court Thursday night.

That also is  when they were told their son had died. They showed little emotion when they heard the news.

"We didn't know what to do with the kid," Stewart-Moore told reporters as he left the courthouse in handcuffs.

Harrison didn't speak.

Harrison apparently gave birth at her boyfriend's home on Grand Pines Drive in south DeKalb near Wesley Chapel Road late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. After the birth, she went to the DeKalb Medical Center’s Hillandale facility in Lithonia. Eventually, she told hospital staff she had just delivered a baby and he was in a dumpster at a gas station on Wesley Chapel Road in Decatur.

Police found nothing in the trash bin.

In a subsequent police interview with Stewart-Moore, the father said Harrison had delivered at his house and he  had put the baby in a storm drain, said DeKalb police spokesman Jason Gagnon.

Stewart-Moore was arrested and jailed.  Harrison was arrested after the hospital discharged her Thursday afternoon.

The baby boy was only a few hours old when DeKalb police officers, frantically looking for him, found him inside a storm drain just a few yards from his father's home. The infant was found around 4:30 a.m. Thursday and was reported in good health initially. The baby was alive and making noise, detectives told Judge Mary Whitehall in Magistrate Court Thursday night.

The baby died several hours later at the hospital.

According to Deanna Smith with the Georgia Department of Human Resources, the couple could have avoided criminal charges by leaving the child with an on-duty hospital worker. The state’s Safe Place for Newborns Act of 2002 allows a mother to leave her newborn baby within seven days of birth at any hospital in Georgia. The newborn must be left with a hospital employee and the mother must leave her name and address.

Scott Nelson, who lives next door to Stewart-Moore, said the storm drain was just three houses away from where Stewart-Moore lives with his mother. Nelson said he knew little about the family next door except Stewart-Moore and his friends would hang out in the yard, and play music loudly while the mother was at work.

“That’s when you hear the commotion over there,” Nelson said.

No one answered phone calls to the home Thursday evening.

Another neighbor, Carol Orr, said she saw Stewart-Moore walking alone outside in the rain Wednesday evening. Now, she says she's shocked and saddened to learn what happened to the newborn.

"It just hit me so hard," Orr said. "They knew what they were doing."

Orr said Harrison didn't appear to be hiding her pregnancy.

According to DeKalb jail records, Stewart-Moore has been in custody there before. He was charged with armed robbery, aggravated assault and kidnapping in connection with the April 2008 robbery of a Candler Road hamburger stand. Last month, he was arrested for marijuana possession, according to jail records.

— Alexis Stevens contributed to this article.