24 July 2008 09:32
An autopsy will be carried out this morning on a baby found dead in a shopping bag at a rural Victorian bus stop yesterday.
It is believe the body of a baby lay in the bag for at least 10 hours before a local man discovered it, dressed in a jump suit and wrapped in a blanket, in a bus shelter at Grahamvale, near Shepparton.
Homicide detectives are investigating whether the baby was abandoned at the bus stop and consequently died of hyperthermia or if its panicked parents dumped the body there after it had died of natural causes. Police revealed that a witness saw the bag at the bus stop on Wednesday morning and they were now trying to determine exactly when it was left there. The baby's sex will not be revealed until a post-mortem examination is carried out.
"One...the baby was abandoned and died of hypothermia, that it was a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) death and the parents didn't know what to do, or it's a homicide," said Victoria Police spokeswoman Senior Constable Julie-Anne Newman of the scenarios being investigated.
"It's too early to say at this stage."
Homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles said the baby may have been as young as a week old and was found by a man putting out his bins on a rural property near the bus shelter.
Iddles has since urged the parents of the baby to come forward.
Source: smh.com.au