(NewsWorthy.news) – A baby who survived a kidnapping has died while at the hospital, according to police.
The announcement comes days after 11-month-old Halo Branton was reported missing, sparking an Amber Alert that was canceled after the girl was found on the grounds of the Schenectady General Electric company. She was pronounced dead at Ellis Hospital on March 10, less than 24 hours after she was first reported missing.
The Schenectady Police Department responded to a call from a home in Bellevue at around 11 p.m. on March 9, at which time they immediately launched a search for the baby. Branton was found the next day in a structure at General Electric. Initially, officials said she was “safe and in good health,” but later updated the statement to say there was no “update” on her physical condition.
A press conference led by officer Ryan Macherone later revealed that the child had been rushed to the hospital upon being found and, despite receiving emergency care from first responders on the way, never regained vital signs and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Macherone said that the case is no longer missing persons but is now a criminal investigation. His department initially requested local community members to check Ring Doorbell or outdoor surveillance camera footage and report any sighting of a woman carrying a baby with a blanket any time after 9pm on March 9.
On Monday, March 11, the baby’s 24-year-old mother, Persia Nelson, was charged with second-degree murder and depraved indifference to human life, according to Robert Carney, the district attorney for Schenectady County. Carney explained that Nelson had dropped her child into an 8-foot-deep utility tunnel at the electric plant, where Branton was found in standing water that came up to her head but not over her face.
An autopsy of the baby found that her cause of death was not drowning, but exposure and hypothermia. Nelson — who posted on social media hours before her child was found, saying she was “drunk asf [sic]” — is being held on $500,000 bail. She will appear in court again on March 14.
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