BOSTON — A woman authorities say put her newborn baby in a trash can on a Boston street was held on $100,000 bail at her arraignment on attempted murder and child abandonment charges.
Marie Merisier, 33, made her first court appearance Monday since the baby boy was found Friday. Not guilty pleas were entered on her behalf.
Merisier arrived visibly pregnant on Friday at the home of a 73-year-old man she knew and went to the bathroom for an hour, prosecutors said in court. The man said when she left the bathroom, she was carrying a brown leather bag and he heard crying, prosecutors said.
She allegedly turned down the man’s offer to call an ambulance, authorities said.
Later Friday, a woman heard crying from inside a trash barrel outside a pizza shop in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood and flagged down an EMS crew, prosecutors said. The emergency medical technicians found the baby, who was taken to the hospital and is now in state care.
Merisier’s attorney, Cristina Rodrigues, asked that her client be released on personal recognizance because she lost her restaurant job at the start of the pandemic and poses no public safety threat.
“This case involved an impossible, complicated set of questions about mental health, prepartum and postpartum, hormonal, emotional and mental health crises,” Rodrigues said.
Massachusetts has a safe haven law that allows parents to surrender a baby at any hospital, police station, or staffed firehouse within seven days of birth without facing criminal charges.