The teenage parents of a baby whose body was found buried in a makeshift grave in the North Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and abuse of a corpse, officials said Monday.
The two suspects, a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy, were arrested Monday afternoon after officers with the Columbus Division of Police responded to a report of an infant buried on the 4000 block of Karl Road.
Patrol officers arrived at the scene shortly after 1 p.m. and were led to a “shallow grave,” where they discovered the body of a baby girl, identified in court documents by her initials, A.Z.
The Franklin County Coroner’s Office pronounced the baby dead, police said in a news release.
CPD homicide detectives launched an investigation and learned that the infant’s parents lived on the city’s west side and that they concealed the pregnancy.
“When the infant died, they proceeded to bury it at the Karl Road location,” officials said in an incident report.
Details on how the baby died or how long she had been buried were not immediately available. The suspects have not been publicly identified.
Columbus Police Sgt. Joe Albert told local CBS station WBNS that a large police presence at a high school on Karl Road Monday evening was connected to the incident.
The investigation is ongoing, officials said.
