REDWOOD CITY, CA (KRON/CNN) – A California woman is accused of trying to kill her newborn by flushing him down the toilet after she gave birth to the boy inside the bathroom of a fast food restaurant.
Sarah Lockner, 25, was working as a cashier at a McDonald’s in Redwood City, CA, on Sept. 4 when she started complaining of stomach pains.
A co-worker went into the bathroom to check on Lockner and found blood all over the floor.
"She just said, ‘Hey, I'm having a heavy period,’” said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.
But prosecutors say Lockner was actually giving birth in the stall.
Then, another McDonald’s employee came in and discovered the unimaginable.
"The employee stood up to look above the stall and saw a newborn baby in the toilet with her hand on his back, pushing him down into the toilet water,” Wagstaffe said.
The co-worker says when she stepped down, she heard the toilet flush. Prosecutors say Lockner stopped when confronted by the co-worker.
When police arrived, the child had no pulse and wasn’t breathing.
"We've had parents that have tried to kill their children, but a newborn just having been born in a bathroom stall and then try to drown that child, we've never seen that,” Wagstaffe said.
The newborn was given CPR and taken to Packard Children’s Hospital, where he was placed in a medically-induced coma.
"The baby looks like it's going to survive. We don't know about brain damage, but we do know it looks like the baby will survive,” Wagstaffe said.
The mother, who has an older child, told authorities she didn’t know she was pregnant.
Wagstaffe says he doesn’t believe her and it makes no difference when it comes to the prosecution.
Charged with attempted murder and inflicting great bodily harm to a child, Lockner is being held on an $11 million bail.
Copyright 2017 KRON, Redwood City Police via CNN. All rights reserved.
