Death investigation underway after infant found in Wheaton

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A horrible discovery in unincorporated Wheaton has the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department asking for help from the public to find out who dumped a newborn baby in a back pack on the side of a private road.

A neighbor who saw the back pack earlier in the day was still reeling Monday night from the devastating news that a newborn baby girl was found dead inside.

“I'm a mother so, there is no way you can, there's no way no, it's like I don't think even now I have digested in my mind that this is true or there was a baby here,” said Stella who did not want to give her last name, but who lives right near where the backpack was discovered.

A landscape crew for Abbott Tree Care saw the small black backpack around 8 a.m. Monday on their way to a job site. They thought it had been dropped by a kid heading to school, so they left it there thinking the parents would come looking for it.

But around 3 p.m. when they were leaving it was still along the side of a private road just off Plamondon Road. So, they stopped and looked inside, thinking they could find the owner and return it.

Instead they found the body of a newborn baby girl. They immediately called their boss and 9-1-1.

“Devastating, being a father of three, just unimaginable for sure, it's hard to react and just sort of numb about it,” said Mike Abbott, owner of Abbott Tree Care who saw pictures of the girl and the backpack. Those images now haunt him.

“Couldn't tell if it was thrown out of a car, couldn't tell if it was sent there you know, we wish we would've discovered it earlier maybe would've had different results,” Abbott said.

For neighbors there is a great sadness for the baby, and so many questions.

“Did the baby suffer, you just kind of those of the emotions that comes right away to you when you see a baby, and then the next thing was in my mind was the baby alive, did they drop it alive, what if I could hear it but if I did not go to sleep what if, you start at if I had it kind of gets to you,” Stella said.

The DuPage County Sheriff’s Department is releasing very little information. The coroner’s office said an autopsy would be done Tuesday.