DA says teen accused of killing her newborn also dumped stilborn baby in trash in 2006

A Henderson teen charged with killing her newborn son this week faced an investigation in 2006 after dumping her stillborn infant in a trash bin at The Mirage, Las Vegas police said.

Carmela Camero, who was 16 at the time, told detectives that she had hidden the pregnancy from her family and panicked after giving birth in a hotel room during a visit to Las Vegas. She wrapped the baby in a towel and tossed the bundle in a trash can outside her room, police said.

The infant was discovered about two days later in the hotel’s trash collection area.

Detectives identified Camero through hotel surveillance video.

The coroner’s office, which named the child Baby Girl Camero, could not determine how she died.

Las Vegas police determined the child was stillborn and did not recommend criminal charges, and they don’t plan to reopen the case in light of this week’s events, officer Bill Cassell said.

Camero attended Wooster High School in Reno in 2006 and eventually moved to Las Vegas with her mother and stepfather. The Clark County School District could find no record of her Friday.

The 19-year-old was attending Nevada State College in Henderson when she gave birth to a son, Jude, Sunday at her home near Horizon Ridge Parkway and Paradise Falls Drive.

Just after midnight Sunday, Camero logged onto her MySpace social networking Web page and listed her mood as “annoyed” along with the note, “Carmela has class tomorrow. ugh.”

According to police, her baby was already dead.

In her interview with detectives, Camero said she didn’t know she was pregnant until giving birth in a bathtub at her house, according to an arrest report.

She left the baby in a towel on her bed while she went to the store to buy clothes, a suction bulb and diapers. That evening Jude started coughing, and Camero worried about her mother finding out about the infant, the report said.

Afraid that her mother would kick her out of the house and being labeled a “whore,” Camero pressed the baby’s face against her breast and held him there until he stopped breathing, the report said.

She slept with the lifeless infant through the night and called a hospital Monday morning to report the child’s death, the report said.

Henderson police went to her house later that morning and collected evidence and talked to Camero. Detectives arranged to conduct a full interview with her at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Just a few hours before her interview at the Henderson Police Department, Camero posted the last message on her Facebook social networking Web page.

“another boring day of classes. I still need to get my books.”

By that evening, Camero was in the Henderson jail charged with murder.

The killing of an infant within 24 hours of birth is known as a neonaticide.

Between 150 and 300 newborns die by neonaticide each year, and those are just the cases that authorities learn about, said Lori Hoffman, a professor of nursing at Moravian College in Pennsylvania.

About 95 percent of neonaticides occur outside a hospital, and the vast majority of parents implicated in the deaths are female adolescents, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And the risk of neonaticide is greater if a child is not the first born for a teenage mother, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Many women who kill their newborns have “pregnancy denial” and either refuse to accept that they’re pregnant or detach themselves from the emotional significance of being pregnant, experts said.

In either case the mother might forgo any prenatal care or assistance during childbirth, and the consequences to the child can be dire.

“Imagine a 16-year-old having no prenatal care and no assistance during childbirth,” said Michelle Oberman, a professor at the Santa Clara School of Law who focuses on issues of pregnancy and motherhood. “There’s a really good chance that something could go wrong.”

Women in such situations typically have no criminal record and don’t use drugs, but they lack education and have low intellectual functioning, according to Diana Lynn Barnes, an expert on the subject who operates the Center for Postpartum Health in Tarzana, Calif.

“(They’re) less likely to know how to problem solve, less likely to access resources,” Barnes said. “You’re talking about women who don’t feel they have options.”

Oberman said the women tend to feel socially isolated.

“There’s nobody in their life they trust with their secrets,” she said.

Sometimes the physical denial can be powerful enough that some women give birth while going to the bathroom and believe they just passed a blood clot, Barnes said.

For women who know they’re having a child but are in emotional denial, they can be so disconnected during childbirth that they can withstand the pain without any assistance.

“Women will describe it as a depersonalized experience,” Barnes said. “They’re able to tolerate the pain, and there are family members in the next room totally unaware of what’s going on.”

Preventing such deaths requires educating women about their options, such as adoption or, as Nevada and many other states have, a “safe haven” law that allows mothers to leave newborns at hospitals and other safe places with no questions asked.

If Camero had done that, she would be a free woman.

“It’s a terrible tragedy for that girl too, in terms of what she has to face for the rest of her life,” Hoffman said.

Review-Journal reporter Maggie Lillis contributed to this report.

Contact reporter Brian Haynes at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.