Newborn Texas Infant Found Abandoned and Lifeless In Porta Potty

Tragedy struck early Thursday morning when a baby was found by workers who were tasked with cleaning portable bathrooms at a Houston park.

According to a report from KXAN, the body of a deceased newborn was discovered in a porta potty at Magnolia Gardens Park in the 18000 block of Riverside Drive near Highway 90 in Houston. The newborn appeared to be a full-term, Hispanic male with his umbilical cord still attached.

“When they came to empty it… they found the baby. A full-term baby in the Portacan, with the umbilical cord still attached,” said Major Susan Cotter of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in a press briefing on Thursday.

The BJ Portacan Company was sent to service the portable toilets that Thursday and informed investigators that they last cleaned the portable bathrooms at Magnolia Gardens Park on Monday at approximately 9:30 AM. Local law enforcement is working on a timeline to find out when the baby was abandoned. The baby's body will undergo an autopsy in an effort to provide details of the baby's death.

Get our free mobile app

The case is being investigated by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit. If anyone has any information regarding the incident, or the identity of the infant’s mother, they are asked to contact the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit at 713.274.9100, or call Crime Stoppers at 713.222.TIPS(8477).

Texas' current Baby Moses law allows babies 60 days old or younger to be surrendered at a safe space like a hospital, fire department, or police department. Efforts to allow new parents the ability to surrender an infant one year of age or younger were proposed in the latest legislative session, but were not approved.

With abortion laws being tightened in Texas, this tragedy may be far from the worst that is to come.

LOOK: What are the odds that these 50 totally random events will happen to you?

Stacker took the guesswork out of 50 random events to determine just how likely they are to actually happen. They sourced their information from government statistics, scientific articles, and other primary documents. Keep reading to find out why expectant parents shouldn't count on due dates -- and why you should be more worried about dying on your birthday than living to 100 years old.

LOOK: The most expensive weather and climate disasters in recent decades

Stacker ranked the most expensive climate disasters by the billions since 1980 by the total cost of all damages, adjusted for inflation, based on 2021 data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The list starts with Hurricane Sally, which caused $7.3 billion in damages in 2020, and ends with a devastating 2005 hurricane that caused $170 billion in damage and killed at least 1,833 people. Keep reading to discover the 50 of the most expensive climate disasters in recent decades in the U.S.

LOOK: Milestones in women's history from the year you were born

Women have left marks on everything from entertainment and music to space exploration, athletics, and technology. Each passing year and new milestone makes it clear both how recent this history-making is in relation to the rest of the country, as well as how far we still need to go. The resulting timeline shows that women are constantly making history worthy of best-selling biographies and classroom textbooks; someone just needs to write about them.

Scroll through to find out when women in the U.S. and around the world won rights, the names of women who shattered the glass ceiling, and which country's women banded together to end a civil war.

Filed Under: houston, News, texas crime, Texas News

Categories: Articles, News