Police and Illinois’ child welfare agency say staff at a Chicago-area hospital didn’t alert them after determining that a bloodied woman who arrived with a gravely ill newborn had not just given birth to the baby boy, as she claimed.
The woman, Clarisa Figueroa, was charged more than three weeks later with killing the baby’s mother , Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, after police found her body outside Figueoa’s home. Chicago police say she cut Ochoa-Lopez’s baby out of her womb on April 23, then called 911 to report she had given birth to a baby who wasn’t breathing. Paramedics took Figueroa and the baby to Advocate Christ Medical Center in suburban Oak Lawn.
Ochoa-Lopez’s family spent those weeks searching for her and holding press conferences pleading for help finding her, unaware the child was in a neonatal intensive care unit on life support.
The baby remained hospitalized on life support on Saturday, according to authorities.
