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A 21-year-old woman accused of killing her newborn son in the bathtub of her family’s Northwest Washington apartment was ordered Friday to undergo a mental health evaluation.

The suspect, Lillian Alvarado, told her father that the baby was born dead on Nov. 28, but the D.C. medical examiner’s office ruled Thursday that the boy was born alive and then was asphyxiated and dismembered.

Alvarado told police that she knew she was pregnant in April or May, and she believed that by November, she was seven months along, according to court documents. She said she woke up at 6 a.m. with a sharp pain and told others in the home that she was sick from something she ate. She later went into the bathroom, where her water broke.

According to the charging documents, Alvarado said that she got into the shower, thinking she was about to go to the hospital, and that the baby was born there.

The affidavit says she told police that she cut the umbilical cord with scissors and did not hear the baby cry. She told police that she remembers hitting her head on the sink as she got out of the tub and flushing the toilet, but then “everything went dark.”

Relatives told police that Alvarado went in and out of the bathroom all morning, once asking for a pair of pants, another time fetching a plunger from a hall closet.

After police arrived, charging documents say, family members tried to force open the bathroom door. One relative got in and saw bloody water in the tub, the documents say. Alvarado’s 17-year-old brother eventually coaxed her out of the bathroom.

Police describe a horrific scene in the bathroom. According to the court documents, the infant, with the umbilical cord still attached, was in the tub, in about an inch of water, and a pair of scissors was in a sink.

Authorities said police arrived at the apartment just before noon that November day, summoned by downstairs neighbors who had noticed blood-tinged water leaking through their ceiling. Coming out of the bathroom, Alvarado sat on a bed moments before officers found the body, and she said, “Forgive me,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in court Friday.

Santiago Alvarado said that his daughter was hospitalized for about a month after the baby’s death and that he just received a bill for $24,000. He said he has not spoken to her since her arrest.

Source: Washington Post