Woman Arrested For Abandoning Newborn Baby In Plastic Bag At Parking Lot

A woman has been arrested on Tuesday, June 28, for allegedly abandoning the body of her newborn baby girl in a plastic bag at a car parking lot in Osaka, Japan.

The woman, identified as Erika Yoshida, a 28-year-old unemployed woman of no fixed address, was taken into custody by Osaka police officers after she dumped her infant baby inside a plastic bag in the Nihonbashi parking lot in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, Japan Today reported.

The incident came to light after the decomposing remains of the newborn baby were found by a bystander in a plastic bag inside a paper bag in the Nihonbashi parking lot in Chuo Ward, Minami entertainment district, near Nankai Namba Station on June 15.

According to investigating officers, the infant was naked and still had her umbilical cord attached at the time of the discovery. However, there were no external signs of injury on the infant's body and decomposition had already begun on the corpse. The officers reportedly found a receipt from a nearby store in the bag in which the infant was kept.

When the officers reviewed the CCTV surveillance camera footage of customers in the store at the time the receipt was issued, they managed to pin Yoshida as the suspect, traced her to a cheap hotel where she was staying, and arrested her on Tuesday, June 28.

After being questioned by the authorities, Yoshida admitted to the crime and told the officers that she gave birth to the baby at a hotel in late April. She added that she had been moving around from hotel to hotel after she gave birth to the child.

In a similar but unrelated incident, a 22-year-old unemployed woman has been arrested for corpse abandonment after she allegedly placed the body of her newborn baby son in a coin locker in Chitose, Hokkaido, Japan, Latin Times reported.

The gruesome discovery came to light after a station cleaning employee found the dead infant’s remains, with its umbilical cord still attached, in a cooler box inside a locker on the morning of June 7. When investigating officers checked station surveillance camera footage, it showed the accused mother, Ayano Koseki, an unemployed 22-year-old woman, of no fixed address, putting the cooler box in the locker.

Following this, the officers launched a manhunt for Koseki and she was detained after being found at a leisure facility in Sapporo on Thursday, June. 9. When the officers interrogated her, she told the authorities that she had come to Hokkaido from the Tohoku region earlier this year, knowing she was pregnant.

She admitted to placing the infant in the coin locker at JR Chitose Station on May 31 and added that she had been staying in internet cafes in Sapporo but had given birth in a room at a cheap hotel.