NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today announced the guilty plea of Tiona Rodriguez, 21, for the October 2013 death of her newborn child. Rodriguez pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to one count of Manslaughter in the First Degree. She is expected to be sentenced on February 6, 2018.

“Tiona Rodriguez deliberately and intentionally killed her defenseless newborn child,” said District Attorney Vance. “While today’s plea cannot bring back the life that was so abruptly ended, it is a just end to this tragedy.”

As admitted in the defendant’s guilty plea, on October 16, 2013, Rodriguez, then 18, delivered an approximately 8-pound male infant, born alive, in the bathroom of a friend’s apartment in Queens. The next day, security personnel at a Victoria’s Secret store in Herald Square stopped Rodriguez and her friend for shoplifting a $45.50 pair of jeans, and discovered the deceased infant in Rodriguez’s bag. The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner later ruled that the infant’s death was caused by homicidal asphyxiation.

Rodriguez “carried out the murder of her newborn infant and then callously shoved him in a bag with the plan of — in her words — to ‘take this s— and dig a hole, put it somewhere, lol, then we go eat IHOP,’” prosecutor Rachel Ferrari said, referring to a text message Rodriguez sent at her arraignment on a second-degree murder charge.

Ferrari said the teen “became pregnant in early 2013 and told no one. She knew she would be in big trouble if her family found out. So, she made a plan to kill this baby,” and “began plotting weeks before he was born.”

“She took steps to get ready, and on October 16, 2013, she woke up and knew that this was the day. She contacted a friend and went to her home in Queens, away from the prying eyes of her friends, her family, her community in Brooklyn,” Ferrari said. “She took a bag with her, and a change of clothes. And she went into her friend’s bathroom, turned on the tub, and gave birth to her baby. Ripping the cord with her bare hands.”

“He wasn’t stillborn. He didn’t die of natural causes. He was murdered in that bathroom,” the prosecutor said.

“The defendant cleaned up after herself, leaving no sign of what transpired in that bathroom, taking her child out in a bag.”

She was on her way to ditch the body when she decided to make a pit stop at the lingerie store, the prosecutor said.

“The defendant took a break from that plan in order to stop in to Victoria’s Secret here in Manhattan and steal, shoving clothes into the same bag that carried her dead son,” Ferrari said.

She said Rodriguez “was not a panicked teenager who didn’t know what she was doing” and had been pregnant twice before.

“When the defendant was 14, she successfully hid her first pregnancy, and it was only when she was in the hospital in labor that her own family became aware that she was even pregnant,” Ferrari said. That child is now 4.

“In 2012, the defendant gave birth a second time. We have evidence that she gave birth to a second baby in her bathtub in her own home. She may have killed the baby, the baby may have been stillborn — but we know that she texted her boyfriend throughout the birth, ultimately telling him — it’s dead,” the prosecutor said.

Rodriguez and the father of the child “discussed via text getting rid of it,” Ferrari said.

Assistant District Attorneys Heather Buchanan, Chloe Kendall, and David Drucker handled the prosecution of this case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg, Chief of the Child Abuse Unit, and Executive Assistant District Attorney John Irwin, Chief of the Trial Division. Assistant District Attorneys Carolina Holderness, Eun-Ha Kim and Joel Seidemann assisted with the case, as did former Assistant District Attorneys Rachel Ferrari and Robert Hettleman.

District Attorney Vance thanked the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct and Homicide Squad, particularly Detectives Thomas Schick and Jose Flores, for their assistance with the investigation

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