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Cause Of Death Undetermined For Baby Found In Jar

Child Had Drugs In System, Autopsy Says

POSTED: Thursday, October 4, 2007
UPDATED: 2:15 pm EDT October 4,2007

A medical examiner Wednesday listed the cause of death as undetermined for a baby girl whose remains were found in a pickle jar in February.

Construction workers in Palm Beach County came across the 2-gallon jar while using a backhoe to clear mud from a cane field off State Road 80 near Belle Glade on Feb. 26. Police said the jar broke open while the workers were digging, releasing a foul odor.

Inside the "Big John's Pickled Sausage" jar was a baby girl who weighed a little more than 2 pounds and was missing her right eye, police said.

Dr. Stuart Graham, an associate county medical examiner, listed the baby's cause of death as "undetermined" in his report. The report said the baby was a 7-month-old fetus with light skin and curly black hair with her umbilical cord still attached.

Graham said salicylates, a compound commonly found in painkillers, was discovered in the fetus' chest and abdominal fluid, according to the report.

No one has named the baby, and she remains unburied.

About a month before the workers found the jar, a New Jersey woman found a mummified baby boy wrapped in a 1950s newspaper and stuffed inside a suitcase while she was cleaning out her deceased parents' storage unit in Delray Beach. A medical examiner's report said the cause of the baby's death was unclear.

Last November, recycling plant workers found a newborn's body in a pile of rocks at Sun Recycling in suburban West Palm Beach. Investigators named the child Baby Grace and held a funeral for the child about a month later. An autopsy could not confirm how the child died.

Florida enacted a safe haven law in 2000 that allows parents to drop off their babies at fire stations, hospitals and emergency medical facilities within three days of birth with no questions asked. It ensures parents can't be investigated, prosecuted or forced to identify themselves as long as there is no indication the infant was abused.

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