A Connecticut woman has been arrested for abandoning an 8-month-old baby she was babysitting in a dumpster after assaulting the infant’s 21-year-old mother, the police said.
According to WFSB, Andiana Griciel Velez, 24, has been charged with risk of injury to a child, second-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment. She is being held on a $500,000 bond and appeared in court on Tuesday.
The police said the abandoned baby was discovered in the dumpster by maintenance workers around an apartment complex in New Haven on Monday afternoon. Though some burn injuries were found on the girl’s hands, she was otherwise fine and alert.
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“It’s scary, you know, thinking what type of person would do something like that. It’s hard to believe someone would do that,” one of the maintenance workers who discovered the baby told WFSB.
The officers said they eventually managed to get in touch with the child’s mother later on Monday and took the baby to the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital where she was in a stable condition.
“Basically coming out of shock, you can tell she was freezing, freezing in that trash can,” an eyewitness also said.
Though Velez is facing charges for throwing the baby in the dumpster, investigators are yet to determine who injured the infant. The New Haven Department of Children and Families is also concurrently investigating that.
Meanwhile, Velez’s court next date is set for October 30.
