MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. (AP) – A young Detroit-area woman who gave birth in a cold garage and left the baby to die apologized Tuesday before a judge ordered a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
The body was discovered at a recycling center in January 2015 after being placed in a bin at a curb in Eastpointe, a Detroit suburb. Police soon learned more: The baby boy was born in a garage weeks earlier, just before Christmas, and was left there to die from exposure while Angela Alexie was inside the house.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Alexie, 25, told a Macomb County judge. “I wish I could take it all back.”
At trial, her lawyer said involuntary manslaughter was a more appropriate charge, but a Macomb County jury disagreed and convicted Alexie of child abuse and murder committed during another felony.
Outside court, county prosecutor Eric Smith said: “This case disgusts me.”
“She had plenty of options, plenty of alternatives,” he said. “No one leaves a newborn in a garage.”
Judge James Biernat Jr. noted that Alexie’s three other children had earlier been removed from her care. She acknowledged a long history of heroin and cocaine use.
The baby’s death and discovery of the body shocked the community. More than 100 people attended a wake, and the boy was buried at a cemetery in Clinton Township. Morgue employees named him Henry Alexander Macomb.