PARIS: A newborn baby died in Paris on Monday after his 18-year-old American mother threw him out a hotel window, umbilical cord still attached, French prosecutors and a police source said.

She threw the infant from the second-floor window of a hotel in the 20th arrondissement in eastern Paris, the prosecutor’s office said. “The newborn was given emergency care but did not survive,” prosecutors said. The baby died at 7:45am at the Robert Debre hospital, a police source said.

Police had been alerted after an infant wrapped in a cloth, with its umbilical cord still attached, had been discovered in front of the hotel, the police source said. The mother, an 18-year-old American student, had given birth in a room on the second floor of the hotel and then thrown her child out of the window, according to the source.

French officials said they had launched a murder investigation, adding that the young woman — who was “part of a group of young adults travelling in Europe” — had been taken into custody.

The mother was taken to hospital where she was to undergo treatment following her delivery, the prosecutor’s office reported. Paris Match, citing its own information, reported the child’s mother was on a study trip to Paris with other students from the United States.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2025