A task force of about 50 police and fire officers, public works personnel and state correctional officers spent a second day Tuesday sifting through a Pontiac landfill for the body of a baby that a 17-year-old Palos Hills girl said she delivered stillborn last week and then placed in a garbage receptacle in Chicago.
Palos Hills police said the girl told officers she delivered the child Feb. 13 in the bathroom of an apartment in the southwest suburb where she lives with her family. The sex of the baby could not be learned.
She said the infant wasn’t breathing when it was born, so she and her boyfriend wrapped the baby’s body in a towel, placed it in a backpack and drove to Chicago, where they disposed of the body in a trash receptacle in the area around 25th and Halsted Streets.
After interviewing the girl and her boyfriend, police said they went to the receptacle but found it empty. They contacted the business that owned the receptacle, learned the name of the refuse company and found out that the trash had been dumped in a landfill in Pontiac, said Palos Hills Detective Sgt. Steve Good.
The landfill is 300 feet long, 100 feet wide and up to 20 feet deep and could take several days to search, he said.
“It’s like trying to dig up a football field,” he said of the facility, which is about 80 miles southwest of Chicago along Interstate Highway 55.
But the search will continue until the area where the infant’s body is believed to be located has been thoroughly inspected.
“Either we’re going to find it there or not,” Good said, adding that police also are continuing to investigate the infant’s death. He declined to elaborate.
Whether any charges are placed against the 17-year-old girl “will depend on what we find,” Good said.
Assisting Palos Hills police in the search are members of the Palos Hills Public Works Department, the Illinois State Police, the Illinois Department of Corrections, fire departments from various communities around Pontiac and the sheriff’s office in Livingston County, where Pontiac is located.
In addition to rakes, shovels and earth moving equipment, the searchers also are using tracking dogs, Good said.
If the baby’s body is found, it would be the second newborn uncovered by south suburban police in the last two weeks.
On Feb. 13, the body of a newborn was found severely burned in a trash bin in Robbins.
In that case, the Cook County medical examiner’s office determined that the infant, a boy, was born alive.
The mother has yet to be found, and the circumstances surrounding the death have yet to be determined, according to Robbins police, who are offering a reward for information in the case.
