Body of baby boy found after search of trash

The body of a baby boy was found Monday by authorities combing through 60 tons of trash at a dump site near Tacoma, and a teenager believed to be the mother was held on $500,000 bail.

Investigators from the Port Angeles police, Pierce County sheriff's office, Tacoma police and a State Patrol crime laboratory spotted the tiny body about 2:10 p.m. as heavy equipment was used to comb through the partially compacted garbage.

An autopsy was pending, and DNA testing to confirm the infant's parentage might not be available for a month or more, Port Angeles police Chief Terry Gallagher told The Associated Press.

In a brief hearing Monday in Clallam County Superior Court, bail was set at $500,000 for a 16-year-old girl who remained in juvenile detention for investigation of first- or second-degree murder. Prosecutor Deborah S. Kelly said a hearing on charges against her was scheduled Wednesday.

The girl will be charged as an adult, Kelly said.

Bail was set at $10,000 for her father, Ronald Last Jr., 41, who was charged Monday with being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of methamphetamine, both felonies, and with concealing a birth, a gross misdemeanor, the prosecutor added. He remained in the Clallam County jail.

Last has an extensive court record with civil and criminal cases dating from 1985 in King, Snohomish, Kitsap and Clallam counties, Gallagher said.

Information on his felony conviction or convictions was not immediately available, but Gallagher said, "We've dealt with him for years."

Police in Port Angeles, about 65 miles northwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula, believe the baby boy died after being born to the girl early Tuesday and was put in trash that was picked up the next day. Garbage from Wednesday was in two containers that initially were taken to a transfer station in Tacoma, about 80 miles southeast of Port Angeles, for transshipment to Oregon, Waste Collections Inc. officials said.

The containers were then rerouted to a site in Graham, about eight miles southeast of Tacoma, to provide more room to conduct the grisly search.

Gallagher told the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles that a woman came to the police station Friday and said she had seen a baby in a trash can in an alley behind the girl's house, but the can was empty when officers arrived.

"This is a very sad case," Gallagher told the newspaper. "I think it is particularly tragic that this girl had so little support that she wasn't able to recognize any other option than what happened."

He said investigators believe the girl delivered the baby at the home at about 3 a.m. Tuesday. She was provided with medical care before she was incarcerated.

"I don't believe that she had any medical care before we took her into custody," Gallagher said.

During a search of the home, police found a gun and what first appeared to be a pipe bomb but turned out to be a device that can be attached to the bottom of a car for transporting illegal drugs, "a fairly common method," he said.

Four other men and several other juveniles also lived at the house, he added.

The 16-year-old moved from Pueblo, Colo., where her mother lives, to her father's home in Port Angeles in October. Law enforcement in Pueblo has been contacted, and investigators have determined that the father of the baby "is an adult, not a minor," Gallagher said.