The remains of a newborn girl with the umbilical cord still attached were found yesterday in a dumpster behind a pizza parlor on the Black Horse Pike in Washington Township, Gloucester County, police said.
The body was stuffed in a plastic trash bag and was lying at the top of the full dumpster. Police said the baby appeared to have been born within the previous 24 hours. Dr. Claus Speth, assistant state medical examiner, concluded that it had been a full-term live birth.
Gloucester County Prosecutor Richard E. Hickey said late last night that the infant died of asphyxiation. He said law enforcement officials have termed the death a homicide.
Hickey said that there was no visible sign of trauma to the infant, who weighed 7 pounds, but that "the baby certainly wasn't born in a hospital. The umbilical cord was cut, but not surgically."
The infant was found by a pig farmer who was scavenging for garbage to feed his animals, police said.
Dennis Riggio, 21, manager of Paisano Restaurant in the Towne Center Shopping Center, said he had deposited garbage in the dumpster at 1 a.m. yesterday and saw no trash bag similar to the silver-colored one in which the body was found.
Riggio said he returned to the restaurant later yesterday and found police on the site. Police declined to divulge the name of the farmer who had discovered the bag.
The baby's remains were taken to Underwood Memorial Hospital, Woodbury, where Speth performed an autopsy.
Hickey said police would be conducting interviews at area hospitals in an attempt to learn whether a woman had sought medical attention for her pregnancy and would interview people in the neighborhood of the pizza restaurant.
"Things like this don't happen around here," Riggio said.
