Teen charged with killing her newborn daughter

Police say the darkest of crimes happened early Monday morning on a quiet Oakdale Street.

According to the criminal complaint from the Washington County Attorney?s Office, that?s when 17-year-old Nicole Marie Beecroft gave birth to a baby girl and put her into a garbage can.

Beecroft first told police the child was stillborn. But that wasn?t what police found when they searched her home.

Investigators found a baby?s body inside a garbage bag, inside a garbage can, along with a knife and some towels. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner later confirmed that the baby had been born alive and then stabbed more than 100 times.

When police confronted the teenage mother again, she responded that she?d been in a "panic" state and had stabbed the infant.

Hospitals say these cases are especially tragic, given the alternatives available to every parent, everywhere in Minnesota.

"Every hospital in the state of Minnesota is prepared to receive babies with the Safe Place program," Sue Shaft, with Fairview Ridges Hospital said.

Under the Safe Haven law, anyone can leave a newborn three days or younger at a hospital, no questions asked. In fact, officials say someone dropped off a newborn at a Minnesota hospital just this week. That child is safe and in foster care.

Hospital staff say they only wish Beecroft knew she too had a choice.

"It brought tears to my eyes," Shaft said. "I thought to myself, I wish so bad that that girl that made that choice would have known about this as an option and made it at the time."

Beecroft is charged with first degree murder.

Her mother says she didn't know her overweight daughter was pregnant.

By Karla Hult, KARE 11 News

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