MOTHER OF ABANDONED BABY SPEAKS OUT

Monday, September 25, 2003
Source: WSVN 7

BAL HARBOR – It was an image that truly disturbed many here in South Florida. This beautiful, newborn baby on the beach, but tonight a much different story… we are speaking to the mother.

Teresa Garcia came to this country from Mexico with a Mexican family in mid-July to be a nanny. She was nine months pregnant. Tonight she is behind bars only hoping and praying and crying that she can hold her baby for the first time.

"When I have my baby again I’m going to be the happiest woman in the world," says Garcia through a translator, "loving my son for the first time in my arms, and what I most desire is that they believe me, that I am not a criminal. I’m not a person who wanted to abandon the boy."

Garcia’s defense team says their client suffers from a condition known as Preeclampsia, known to cause high blood pressure and the swelling of the brain, leading to confusion, exactly what happened, they say, to Garcia that day on the beach. And it’s not only the attorneys…
We meet up with a doctor who treated Garcia when she was sent to the ER. "To the best of my impression when we saw her she had Preeclampsia, when I admitted her from the Emergency Room directly to the ICU," says Doctor Cesare Di Rocco.

"I feel for her," says Garcia’s attorney David Kubiliun, "being the father of two children, I feel horrible for her and I had to get involved along with Mister Nuwkirk to make sure that injustice is not carried out."