Cameron County officials and other law enforcement authorities will resume searching Thursday morning for a newborn baby believed to be dead.
Authorities used a drone Wednesday afternoon to look for the baby after its mother told them that the baby was born dead and that she took the infant out to the grassy area, Cameron County Pct. 1 Constable Norman Esquivel Jr. said.
Although authorities searched for hours on Wednesday, no baby was found.
“By what the mother is saying to us is that she did have a lifeless child and that she remembers the last area she had him was over here,” Esquivel Jr. said.
The baby was born on March 8 and the baby died on March 9, authorities said the mother told them. The Constable’s Office started working on the case on March 16 and arrested the parents two days later.
“We are going to put up a drone in the air to see if maybe we can get some aerial footage of the area where we last know of where the child may be,” Esquivel Jr. said.
According to Esquivel’s office, on March 16, someone sought help from the constable to investigate the welfare of the newborn. “Information was received that a child had possibly been born to a couple living in Long Island Village. The reporting party had received conflicting stories about the child’s welfare,” Esquivel stated earlier in a press release.
Because the mother left the baby in a grassy field and wetland near the old causeway and Long Island Village near Port Isabel, Esquivel said authorities have not ruled out the possibility that the coyotes may have gotten to the baby or the infant’s body got washed away.
“That is an obstacle that we are facing right in this area that we are searching,” Esquivel said. “At night it is full of coyotes, it is very populated in this area at night with coyotes. That is something we are facing as well.”
Of the baby’s parents, Zachary D. DelaRosa is charged with Injury to a Child, a second-degree felony, and Susanne J. Pierce is charged with Abuse of Corpse, a state jail felony, authorities said.
Both remain jailed at a Cameron County facility on bonds of $70,000 and $60,000 respectively.
