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Officials say baby found dead was alive at birth

The boy's body was in the mother's car. No charges have been filed as the investigation continues.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published November 4, 2005

SPRING HILL - Not quite three weeks ago, Nicole Batiste, 19, showed up at Spring Hill Regional Hospital complaining of complications clearly related to child birth. The nurses saw no baby. Deputies found a dead infant boy in Batiste's car in the parking lot.

On Thursday, the Hernando County Sheriff's Office released the first tidbit of information since then: The boy was alive when he was born.

Batiste gave birth Oct. 15 at her home at 7281 Blackhawk Trail, Spring Hill, according to the original sheriff's news release from Oct. 18.

Thursday's release also said the specific cause of death is still unknown.

The results of a toxicology report, which is part of the autopsy, will help determine that.

"We have no cause of death, no manner of death," said Elaine Wood, the records custodian at the 5th District Medical Examiner's Office in Leesburg.

What the Sheriff's Office isn't saying at this point is whether Batiste is going to face any charges, or what, exactly, they might be.

"The investigation is still pending," sheriff's spokeswoman Deputy Donna Black said. "I'm not going to speculate."

A 35-year-old St. Petersburg woman accused last week of wrapping her just-born boy in towels, putting him in a tote bag and stuffing the bundle in a trash bin at a JCPenney was charged earlier this week with aggravated manslaughter of a child.

"We knew we had a living, viable infant when he was born," St. Petersburg homicide Sgt. Mike Puetz said during a news conference Tuesday.

"That's apples and oranges," Black said. "The circumstances are different. There is a clear intent there in St. Pete. You just can't compare the two cases."

Or the fact, she said, that charges came almost immediately in St. Petersburg and have not come in three weeks in Hernando.

"We are in the process of an investigation, and we are being thorough," Black said. "We are not going to be pressured into making a quick-snap decision."

Florida has "safe haven" laws that allow a parent to leave an unharmed, unwanted baby younger than three days old at a hospital, a fire station, a doctor's office or an ambulance station without being charged with a crime.

Batiste, who has no criminal history in Hernando, is a 2004 graduate of Central High School. She was active in the Future Farmers of America chapter there and won a business award as a 10th-grader at Central's year-end Evening of Excellence.

The next step for the Sheriff's Office in the case of her baby depends on the results of that toxicology report out of a lab in Melbourne.

Black says that could take three to four weeks.

Wood says it might take up to three months.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified November 4, 2005, 11:17:00]