Twenty Years Ago, a Baby Was Found Bleeding to Death on the Side of a Texas Road. A Woman Was Just Caught
In Texas, an arrest has been made in the death of a newborn girl who was found on the side of the road wrapped in a jacket with her umbilical cord still connected. The case has been open for more than twenty years.
In a press release on July 1, Attorney General Ken Paxton said that Shelby Stotts had been charged with second-degree manslaughter after DNA tests proved that she was the mother of the baby.
The baby, who was named “Angel Baby Doe,” was left in a ditch on the side of the road south of Fort Worth in November 2001, according to the police. “She failed to get medical help right away after giving birth and failed to clamp the baby’s umbilical cord, which caused the child to bleed to death,” the news release says.
A Facebook post from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office says that a person was picking up trash on the side of the road when he came across a “lifeless infant wrapped in a jacket with their umbilical cord still attached.” According to the post, investigators thought the baby girl was born living, probably outside of a hospital, and had only recently died before being found.
“Because of how Angel Baby Doe died, investigators felt that the child’s death was caused by foul play,” the sheriff’s office said in a post on July 2. “For more than twenty years, the Johnson County Sheriff’s office worked hard to find Angel Baby Doe.”
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office told the post in June 2021 that it had sent investigative evidence to the DNA testing lab Othram in the Houston area in the hopes that it could help identify the body. The DNA profile of the baby was made by Othram scientists using forensic genome sequencing. This profile was then used to do genetic family research, which led them to find Stotts as the baby’s mother, according to the release.
The release from the attorney general said, “Additional evidence suggests that the child was alive and breathing at the time of her birth and that Stotts is responsible for abandoning the child.”
The attorney general’s office says Stotts will be charged in Johnson County under the laws that were in place in 2001. It’s not clear if she has made a plea or hired a lawyer to speak for her.
Local Fox 4 says Stotts used to work at Cleburne High School in Cleburne, Texas. In a statement to the news source, the school district said it was “aware” of Stott’s arrest and confirmed that she no longer works there.
“After more than twenty years, we are getting closer to getting justice for Angel Baby Doe and making sure that the person who caused this tragedy is held responsible,” Paxton said. “I appreciate how hard our investigators work and how skilled they are, and I praise the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office officers for their commitment to finding the truth.”