Mubashra Uddin, 19, a Chicago resident, was accused of allegedly throwing her infant daughter to her death from an eighth-floor window on November 11. According to prosecutors the teen was hiding her pregnancy by wearing lose clothes fearing that her parents, who are Muslim, would not approve, Chicago Tribune reported.
Uddin, now a student at DeVry University, found out she was pregnant in February but told only her boyfriend and one other friend, Cook County prosecutors and her attorney said. Many unanswered questions remain about the baby’s death, including how no one in the small three-bedroom apartment–including an 11-year-old sister who normally shared a bed with Uddin–heard the young woman giving birth on November 11.
At a court hearing in Cook County Nov. 16, prosecutors said Uddin gave birth to a full term 7-pound, 11-ounce baby girl in the family’s high-rise apartment in the 800 block of West Eastwood Ave., and dropped the baby out of the bedroom window when she heard her mother approaching, news reports said.
A man found the baby naked and bloody, but still breathing, and alerted security at the building to call 911. Paramedics took the baby girl to Weiss Memorial Hospital, where she died on Nov. 12, from her massive injuries including skull fractures, a fractured spine, a broken left shoulder, fractured left and right ribs, and a lacerated aorta, lacerated liver and lacerated bowel, and suffered from blood in the abdomen. The Cook County medical examiner’s office later declared the death a homicide by blunt-force trauma.
Uddin at first denied she had anything to do with the infant, but she made “multiple admissions” on video after investigators interviewed her, news reports said. Uddin’s attorney, Adam Sheppard, said the family is supporting the teen, a straight-A student at Devry University. “Her family is standing by her,” Sheppard is quoted saying in news reports.
“Standing before you is someone who is heartbroken and sad. … She is a confused, older teenager,” Sheppard said, adding that Uddin was “a very humble person who is deeply saddened.” Mubashra Uddin request for bail has been denied and she is currently held in Cook County jail awaiting the trial.
According to reports. Mubashra Uddin met her first boyfriend, a fellow student at Uplift Community High School in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, not long after she turned 13, according to family and friends. But in the strict Muslim home where Uddin was raised, even speaking to boys —-particularly African-American ones–was forbidden. When her Pakistan-born parents found out about her boyfriend, they pulled her out of the high school and home-schooled her for her last two years.