GUILTY MD - Danielle Riley charged in death of newborn, Clinton, 2005

Oh this makes me soooo mad!! I just never, never, ever can understand how a woman can do this to her own baby!! She was 22 in college, so she wasn't some naive teenager. What a horrible decision she made, now her life is ruined. It would have been better to have the child and give it up and she could have gone on with her life and the baby would go to people who WANTED it.

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/5436897/detail.html?subid=22100764&qs=1;bp=t

i still can't fathom how a woman can be pregnant and give birth without anyone knowing, unless they live in some remote area or weigh 300 pounds. especially a young woman in college????????? come on.

reb said:

i still can't fathom how a woman can be pregnant and give birth without anyone knowing, unless they live in some remote area or weigh 300 pounds. especially a young woman in college????????? come on.

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Years ago when I was in high school a married home economics teacher didn't know she was pregnant until her water broke. She was big boned, just thought she put on a little weight and thought she was going through the change. She bent over to get something out of the oven at school and her water broke.
After that, I spent some time working on an OB unit, and saw several young girls whose parents didn't know... and a young girl who claimed not to know she was pregnant. Her periods were always irregular, and she didn't know why they stopped, she just didn't think about it.
So yes, I believe that it can happen.
I just can't understand a girl or woman who manages to have the child on her own, and then throws it away where she knows it will die.
Esp. now when most states have safe haven laws. I have made sure both of my kids are aware of the safe haven law in my state, so if they ever come across a girl who is pregnant and her parents don't know, maybe they can tell them about the law.

My sister was a junior in college when she got pregnant. The first people she told was my parents. Dad was NOT happy about it. She had her child and was going to put her up for adoption and signed all the papers before she left the hospital. She stayed with me and by the third day we called the social worker to get my neice back. My sister was a wreck, she couldn't give her up. Well my Dad said he didn't ever want to see my sister, my mom read him the riot act put him in his place...LOL. I took her to my parent's home with the baby, at first Dad just ignored us. When my neice started crying he yells, she's hungry. My mom handed the bottle and the baby to him and said feed her then. Well he never put her down!! His macho tough guy, I don't want an illiegitimate baby in my house went right out the window when he looked at her sweet innocent face. My neice is now 24 and in medical school and her and her Grandpa have always been like 2 peas in a pod. She was his first grand-daughter.

I just don't know why this young woman felt so much fear in having her baby. She obviously didn't have any prenatal care and hid her pregnancy. I don't know how she did that living at college. I don't feel sorry for her being charged with homocide. She had knowlege to know the alternatives available.

SadieMae said:

My sister was a junior in college when she got pregnant. The first people she told was my parents. Dad was NOT happy about it. She had her child and was going to put her up for adoption and signed all the papers before she left the hospital. She stayed with me and by the third day we called the social worker to get my neice back. My sister was a wreck, she couldn't give her up. Well my Dad said he didn't ever want to see my sister, my mom read him the riot act put him in his place...LOL. I took her to my parent's home with the baby, at first Dad just ignored us. When my neice started crying he yells, she's hungry. My mom handed the bottle and the baby to him and said feed her then. Well he never put her down!! His macho tough guy, I don't want an illiegitimate baby in my house went right out the window when he looked at her sweet innocent face. My neice is now 24 and in medical school and her and her Grandpa have always been like 2 peas in a pod. She was his first grand-daughter.

I just don't know why this young woman felt so much fear in having her baby. She obviously didn't have any prenatal care and hid her pregnancy. I don't know how she did that living at college. I don't feel sorry for her being charged with homocide. She had knowlege to know the alternatives available.

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Sadie, that story about your Dad and your niece is the sweetest story. It brought tears to my eyes.

I will never understand how anybody could throw a poor, defenseless baby away, knowing it will die. It just breaks my heart.

This just breaks my heart. I can understand not know in the early stages that you are pregnant, but come on people. When the baby is doing all that moving and has the hiccups, what on earth do they think is going on. I don't by that at all, that they don't know they are pregnant.

This is right by where we live, i cant believe some people are so selfish.....

Good Lord, read the stories that have been posted here in the last few weeks....

When did human life stop having any value to so many people? This story and others break my heart!!

LButler said:

When did human life stop having any value to so many people? This story and others break my heart!!

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I believe the date was Jan. 22, 1973..........Roe vs Wade became law

Sherry

Girls need to start having yearly doctor visits. That sure cure a lot of the "not knowing" b.s.

Sherry67 said:

I believe the date was Jan. 22, 1973..........Roe vs Wade became law

Sherry

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I'm not a big abortion proponet, but in this case it may have been preferrable to dying a cold lonely death in a storm drain.

2XL said:

This just breaks my heart. I can understand not know in the early stages that you are pregnant, but come on people. When the baby is doing all that moving and has the hiccups, what on earth do they think is going on. I don't by that at all, that they don't know they are pregnant.

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It happens here and there. I saw one where it was a mother with 3 kids, she was sure she wasn't pregnant, because she knew how that felt - and the baby just wasn't moving around, even late in the 3rd trimester. Other times it's a first baby and they think that their birth control or stress or something is causing the periods not to happen. It's quite possible not to know - not common, but it happens.

But once you know - turn the baby over to someone, or have an abortion. Have some responsibility for what you are doing! Drop it at a hospital, with anyone remotely responsible - anything is better than what she did.

I'm thinking she knew, couldn't decide what to do, then paniced, was only thinking of herself, and made a very, very stupid mistake. How easy would it have been to contact an adoption agency, and had the new parents right there at the hospital to take the baby.

Hmmm, one thought occurs to me - did she have medical insurance? That could explain a bit - she may have thought that giving birth in a hospital, the doctors appointments would cost too much - and that if she couldn't do that that then she probably couldn't get the child adopted. It's dumb - there are all kinds of programs to help her out, as well as the adoptive parents, Planned Parenthood for lots of low cost prenatal care - but I can see her maybe not even thinking about that, not realizing that there are a ton of alternatives out there. Somehow that just fits into a profile I could see of her - raised by middle class at the least, sent off to college, she probably has never been on gov't assistance and doesn't realize that there is help out there, even short of you being a homeless person.

Doesn't excuse it, but that could help to explain her thought process.

So she admitted to her mom that she had given birth the day before and her mom didn't do anything about it! She could have tried to find the baby and see if was still alive or called the authorities or something, instead she waited until
they came to her door:furious: What the hell is wrong with this family!

All she had to do was take the baby to ANY fire department or police department and drop it off. NO QUESTIONS asked. She was in college for Christ sake. They put notices up all over the place about this policy. She knew and she made the decision to throw the baby away like a piece of trash.

bakerprune64 said:

So she admitted to her mom that she had given birth the day before and her mom didn't do anything about it! She could have tried to find the baby and see if was still alive or called the authorities or something, instead she waited until
they came to her door:furious: What the hell is wrong with this family!

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I wondered the exact same thing.

I could somewhat see her panicing and doing something incredibly stupid... but her mother has no such excuse. I guess we know where she got it from.

From March 2007:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007-03-16/news/0703160200_1_riley-garbage-bag-storm-drain

She was used to keeping secrets. As a young teenager, her lawyers said, she kept quiet about her mother's boyfriend sexually abusing her. As a college basketball player, she concealed her pregnancy. And when she gave birth in the bathroom of her dorm room, she hid the baby's body in a garbage bag, then deposited it in a storm drain near her father's home.

Yesterday, some of 22-year-old Danielle Eboni Riley's secrets were discussed in a Baltimore County courtroom. Judge Vicki J. Ballou-Watts listened to details of the young woman's turbulent life, then sentenced the former Villa Julie College student to 20 years in prison for the murder of her newborn daughter.

"She nearly got away with murder," said John McKee, an assistant state's attorney. "But for her roommate... we wouldn't know there was a murder. We wouldn't have known there was a baby."

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