Sydney mom charged with attempted murder of baby

SYDNEY (AP) — A 30-year-old Sydney mother has been charged with the attempted murder of her newborn son who was allegedly abandoned in a roadside drain for five days before passersby heard his cries, police said Monday.

The week-old baby was in serious but stable condition in Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital on Monday, a day after a group of cyclists found him in a 2.5-meter (8-foot) deep drain beside the M7 Motorway in the Sydney suburb of Quakers Hill, police said in a statement.

His mother from Quakers Hill, whose name has not been released, remains in police custody and will appear in a Sydney court on Monday on charges of attempted murder. She faces a potential maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if convicted.

“Police will allege the baby, believed to have been born on Monday (Nov. 17), was placed into the drain on Tuesday,” the police statement said.

The baby was found wrapped in a hospital blanket. Police used hospital records to find the mother on Sunday afternoon.

She was questioned for hours and was briefly taken to a hospital before she was charged, police said.

Quakers Hill Police Inspector David Lagats said on Sunday that doctors had estimated the baby to be only two or three days old.

The boy had no signs of physical injury, but was malnourished and dehydrated, Lagats said.

Cyclists riding along a bicycle lane beside the motorway heard the baby on Sunday morning.

“We actually thought it was a kitten at first, but when we went down there we could hear exactly what it was — you could definitely tell it was a baby screaming,” cyclist David Otte told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

It took six men, including three police officers, to lift a 200-kilogram (440-pound) concrete lid that covered the drain, the newspaper said.

Police suspect the baby was squeezed through the drain's narrow opening and dropped to the bottom.

There had been no rain in Sydney for more than a week, so the drains were dry.

Department of Families and Community Services district director Lisa Charet said the baby would likely be taken into state care when he was discharged from the hospital.