According to the court documents, the young mother, later identified as Arya, was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation. The woman reportedly killed her newborn baby, who she didn’t named, and threw the baby’s body in ocean. The 29-year-old mother was initially charged with one count of first-degree premeditated murder for tossing her newborn. The defendant pleaded not guilty, but reached a deal with prosecutors in the state’s attorney’s office in which she agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child and abuse of a dead human body.
Judge Howard credited Arya with 231 days of time already served. According to the court documents, the mother reportedly went to a hotel room where she gave birth to a baby. The young mother never called 911 or sought medical attention for her baby. She never asked for help for her child, L&C reported. On June 1, 2018, deputies responded to a 911 call after someone called about a female baby floating in the water off the shore. First responders recovered the body and determined that the newborn died very soon after birth, likely within a few days. The manner of death was determined to be a homicide with the cause of death being asphyxia. In June 2022, PBSO Crime Lab contacted authorities about an individual identified as the possible father of the newborn.
The father, who was not identified, told investigators that he met Arya in high school and the two had dated until approximately September or October 2017, at which point he moved and the two lost contact. They spoke again in the summer of 2018 and she told him that she had been pregnant with his child from the previous year, but told him that she ‘took care of it.’ Shortly after, investigators obtained a discarded coffee cup from Arya and her DNA came back a match as the mother of the newborn baby.
During an interview with investigators, the woman reportedly admitted to giving birth to a baby girl on May 30 and throwing her in the ocean. “She says she didn’t know she was pregnant. She wasn’t feeling well. She had the baby in the hotel room bathroom. She didn’t know she was pregnant until she saw the baby come out. She said the baby landed in the water and she passed out and didn’t pick up the baby or check on her at all,” Det. Brittany said during a press conference