A Florida mother who was arrested four years after her child was found dead in an inlet in 2018 pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office said.
Arya Singh, 30, was sentenced after she pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child and abuse of a dead human body, the State Attorney’s Office for the 15th Judicial Circuit said.
Singh was arrested in December, more than four years after the newborn, who was called “Baby June” by investigators, was found in Boynton Beach Inlet in Palm Beach County on June 1, 2018.
Her arrest came after DNA testing linked the child to a relative, officials said.
Singh told investigators that she did not know she was pregnant until she gave birth on May 30, 2018, and that when the baby went into the inlet she was already deceased, a police detective said then.
The prosecutor's office said Singh never called 911 or sought help.
"As the child’s mother, under the circumstances she placed herself in, she was the only person who could have saved that child’s life," Marc Freeman, a spokesman for the state attorney's office, said in an emailed statement for the office.
Singh's attorney, Gregory Salnick, said Thursday that "there are no winners in a case like this" and called it a tragedy.
"It was Ms. Singh’s desire to put this behind everyone to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering," he said.
