A dead baby found in Ballard and the homeless mother who wonders if he was ever alive

She didn’t know she was pregnant, she later told police, even though a relative suspected she might be.

On the day she gave birth, in February 2023, she was riding her bike near the train tracks at Shilshole Bay in Ballard. She felt labor pangs, got off her bike, and walked into bushes in a parking lot.

As traffic whooshed nearby, she dropped to her knees and gave birth.

It was a boy. She had been roughly 32 to 36 weeks pregnant.

The baby made noises after he was born, she said later, like an animal, maybe a cat or a dog. She’d never heard that sound before, she said. She stayed with her son for five hours, maybe six, and then she left him there, naked, on a bed of baby wipes. The temperature outside was chilly, around 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

Was he alive? Was he real? She didn’t know, she said later.

Det. Don Waters from Seattle’s homicide took the case, employing shoe-leather police work and DNA technology to find the mother, which he did last month after a year and a half working the case. King County Superior Court set bail for $150,000, finding probable cause for manslaughter in the second degree, reckless endangerment, and unlawful disposal of human remains.

Ultimately, the woman was released on July 26, no charges filed.

Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said in a statement that “the only evidence that the baby was born alive comes from the woman’s statements that the baby made noise for a couple of minutes after he was born.

"Due to her mental state at the time her statement was made — including hearing voices, according to police investigators — it is difficult to determine how reliable her statements are.”

The autopsy by the King County Medical Examiner, too, could not determine whether the infant was born alive.

Because there was no additional evidence, aside from the mother’s testimony, prosecutors declined to file charges.

“A defendant’s statement is only admissible if there is some independent evidence that a crime occurred,” McNerthney said.

Sparrow Etter Carlson, co-founder of Aurora Commons and SHE Clinic, said she wasn't surprised to hear the woman didn’t know she was pregnant. She has counseled other unhoused Seattle women who learned they were pregnant roughly six months along – often because heroin stops menstruation, a typical sign of pregnancy.

Etter Carlson wondered aloud what the woman’s options were.

“Where do people go when they are treated as ex-humans in our society?” Etter Carlson said. “They go to the bushes. They go behind a dumpster. Because they are truly not welcome anywhere in this society.”

Fresh from childbirth, the woman tried to flag down passing cars, including a police car, but none stopped. She did not seek medical attention – for herself or the baby. Instead, she bused to the University District, where the baby’s father lives.

She didn’t reveal to the father that she’d just given birth. She was 40; he was 57. They had met more than a decade earlier when he lived in a van. He had helped her cross the street on a dark, rainy night, and after that, she would stop by and stay with him for a few nights at a time.

Det. Waters’ search for the mother started four days after the baby’s body was first spotted -- by man in his late 30s who had pulled over to pee in the bushes.

The man, an attorney, was driving home from the Ballard Sunday Market with his wife and 3-year-old child. The man saw the dead baby boy, who he described as looking like a doll. Animals had started to consume the baby’s flesh, he told Det. Waters.

The man did not call 911, to the detective’s bafflement. Instead, the man snapped a photo of the baby and waited until he got home to report it via the city’s Find It, Fix It app. Unable to find a tab for dead humans, he listed the baby as a dead animal.

“Dead baby abandoned in bushes,” he wrote as the description.

The man who found the baby told Waters that he wanted to avoid the hassle of waiting for an officer.

“My experience with this kind of thing, with 911, is that I would have had to stay there until, you know, a responding officer came,” the man said.

Plus, he said, he did not believe a dead child merited a call to 911. What could anyone do to help the baby at that point?

Det. Waters wrote in his police report that he explained to the man, “Even though the child was dead, it would still be an emergency call, and the incident involved a human being.”

It is unusual for a baby to be abandoned. In Washington state, 15 babies since 2020 have been relinquished to so-called “safe havens” -- fire stations, hospitals, or clinics, according to data from Department of Children, Youth, and Families. Far fewer are abandoned on the streets like the Ballard baby.

Det. Waters' first stop in his investigation was at a nearby tent encampment, where he learned of a woman who had been recently pregnant. Police observed her and picked up a cigarette butt she had tossed to compare her DNA with the baby’s – but she was not the mother.

Meanwhile, the medical examiner could not say how the baby died. Drug use by the mother may have contributed, their report said; also, the baby was premature. The doctors could not tell if he had drawn a breath, or if he was stillborn. There were also fractures to the bones around the baby’s eyes.

Six months after the baby was found, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab pinged Det. Waters.

They had identified the father, whose DNA had been logged two decades earlier. It was a fluke, a happy accident: His DNA had been extracted from a beer bottle retrieved at a crime scene in 2004.

Det. Waters visited the father, who, he wrote in his police report, “seemed genuinely surprised when he learned of this news.”

The father identified the mother easily; he said she was the only woman he’d slept with in six or seven years.

In July, police found the mother at the father’s apartment.

When Det. Waters interviewed the mother, he noticed she was having separate conversations with herself. She told Det. Waters that she was speaking to “Echo” and “Bird,” but could not describe them. She asked if the baby had been real.

Det. Waters filed a detailed police report, recommending that the mother be charged with manslaughter in the second degree, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It would not come to pass.

Etter Carlson was heartened to hear the woman wasn’t charged.

“Where were all the touchpoints along the way for her?” Etter Carlson asked. “We are so underserved in this city. And with this particular population, with female identifying people experiencing homelessness, they’re so disconnected.”

This story includes past reporting by KUOW's Amy Radil.