In New Jersey, a teen couple was sentenced to 10 years behind bars after suffocating their newborn son to death.
Jada M. McClain, now 20, hid her pregnancy while she’s still in Neptune Township Regional High School in 2019.
According to one of Jada’s friends, she gave birth to her baby while sitting on the toilet at her house, and told the authorities that she pressed her newborn son’s chest until he stopped breathing.
Jada then called her boyfriend, Quaimere Mohammed, now 21, and the teen couple threw their son’s bagged remains in a dumpster near the Washington Village complex on Monroe Avenue in Asbury Park.
The newborn’s remains were never retrieved after the trash was disposed of at the Monmouth County dump in Tinton Falls.
During the trial, Jada’s attorney described her as immature, naive, and detached from reality and suggested a possibility for an insanity defense that never happened.
The investigators said that Jada feared that her parents would find out that she got pregnant if she tried for an abortion. She also tried to terminate her pregnancy herself by overdrinking alcohol, taking drugs, and smoking marijuana.
On the other hand, Quaimere’s lawyer told the court that the two were madly in love, and described their crime as a family tragedy.
Jada pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated murder while Quaimere pleaded guilty to second-degree disturbing or desecrating human remains.
“An infant is dead and two young people are going to prison,” Monmouth County’s Christopher Gramiccioni said after the sentencing. “New Jersey’s Safe Haven Protection Act provides a legal, safe, and confidential process for anyone wishing to relinquish custody of a newborn.”
“It is important that people be made aware of this law,” he said.
New Jersey’s Safe Haven Infant Protection Act allows a parent to give up a healthy infant to 30 days old, no questions asked, at a police station or emergency room.