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Mom pleads guilty in death

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published December 1, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - This, authorities say, is what Nicole Batiste, 19, did early on the morning of Oct. 15, 2005: She gave birth alone on a tile floor in her bedroom in the house she lives in with her mother. She cut the umbilical cord, wrapped the baby boy in a beach towel and put him in a 12-quart clear-plastic Rubbermaid tub and then put that into the toolbox in the rear of her purple pickup parked outside. Then she drove herself to Spring Hill Regional Hospital because she continued to bleed.

On Thursday, Batiste, who is now 20, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child.

Circuit Judge Jack Springstead set sentencing for Jan. 11. Batiste will be sentenced as a youthful offender - that was part of the plea agreement - which means she can't get more than four years in prison and her total sentence can't go longer than six.

Batiste's mother, Barbara Abrams, gave a quick "no comment" on her way out of the courtroom, and Batiste didn't want to talk at all. Never has - not when she was arrested, not at any of her court hearings over the last year-plus, not in response to letters a reporter sent to her home.

So what is known about this very human case comes almost exclusively from the black ink on the white paper of sheriff's reports, medical records and court documents.

Batiste, of Spring Hill, is slim and quiet, was an honor student at Central High School and had been going to Pasco-Hernando Community College and working as a hostess at the Outback Steakhouse on U.S. 19.

She was with friends in the summer of 2005 when she found out she was pregnant by taking a test in the handicapped stall of the women's restroom at Outback. A doctor in Brooksville confirmed that in late July. She was 19 to 20 weeks pregnant at the time.

She continued to go to doctor's appointments, was taking some prenatal vitamins, and had some sonograms done, too - including one the day before she gave birth, when she saw and heard the heartbeat, she later told a sheriff's deputy. But she never told her mother, or her boyfriend - the father of the child - and she had not bought blankets or diapers. Friends and co-workers said later in depositions that she had said she was scared and that she didn't want the baby.

On Oct. 15, about 7 a.m., in her bedroom: Batiste was eight months pregnant and woke up in pain and felt the need to push.

So she did. She pushed and pushed and then saw a head.

Then she used her hands and she pulled. Said one sheriff's report: "Pulled and pulled and pulled." The baby came out and made a sound like a gasp.

She lay flat on her back on the floor.

Then she sat back up and picked up the baby, who was not moving and did not appear to be breathing, she said later. She took some blue-handled scissors and cut the umbilical cord and wrapped the baby in a beach towel.

Then she lay flat on her back again.

She went into the bathroom and passed the afterbirth and put it in a garbage bag and tied the bag closed. She used some socks and a pair of pants to clean the bathroom and then the bedroom.

She changed clothes. She went into the living room and talked to her mother and said nothing about the dead baby on the floor in her room.

Then she put the baby and the towel in the Rubbermaid container and took it out to the pickup. When she got to the hospital, she told nurses she had had a miscarriage, and she told deputies the baby was still at her home, and that no one had been home when she had given birth.

Then she told the truth.

A sheriff's detective asked her why she didn't call 911.

"I didn't want anyone to know," she said.

He asked why she didn't call to her mother for help.

"I didn't want to wake her up."

He asked her why she didn't try to help when she heard her child gasping for air.

"I didn't think about it."

The sheriff's report says she was "calm" and "unemotional" at the hospital.

A nurse asked her to rate her pain on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the most painful. Zero, she said.

The medical examiner said the cause of death was lack of proper immediate resuscitation, and that an infection of the placenta contributed, too. The report established only that the baby was born alive. There was no way to know if he took one breath, or two, or three.

The baby was never given a name. He was 43 centimeters long and weighed 1.4 kilograms when he was born. And when he died.

On Thursday, Batiste sat the way she always sits in court - real still, ramrod straight, blank-faced with her lips held in a tight flat line.

Her case was called just after 9. There was a long bench conference with Springstead, prosecutor Pete Magrino and public defender J. Ray Shaw. Shaw left and met with Batiste and Abrams in the lobby outside.

The case was called again after 10. Another bench conference. A resolution.

Batiste went back to her seat and sat in front of her mother and took a pen and a clipboard and signed the plea agreement and then sat still again. She looked tiny and cold and pulled the sleeves of her shirt over her hands. Her mother had a sweater and placed it on the shoulders of her daughter.

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

[Last modified November 30, 2006, 21:25:31]