"I thought it was just blood": Hispanic mother accused of leaving her baby in New York hospital garbage can

A Mexican mother was arrested on May 20 after leaving her newborn son in a bathroom trash can at a New York hospital.

“I thought it was just blood,” Lucía García, 21, told the New York Post on Saturday from her home in Staten Island. "I didn't know I threw my baby away until the nurse told me later."

The newborn baby was found by a police officer working on hospital security after hearing crying coming from a trash can.

“I was handcuffed to my hospital bed,” Garcia said, adding that a police officer was sitting in a chair in the corner of her room.

The young woman, who arrived in the United States about 10 months ago, was charged with two counts of assault, two counts of reckless endangerment and one count of acting in a manner injurious to a child, according to online records.

The baby was taken to NYU Langone Health after being found in the dump and is still hospitalized but is now in the custody of the city's Administration for Children's Services.

According to the young woman's father, Ambrosio García, 41, her daughter had insisted that she was not pregnant and that she took her to the hospital the night before because she felt unwell.

The young mother assures that her baby's father lives in Manhattan and that she went several times to the house she shares with her father in Staten Island after meeting on Facebook.

"How am I going to tell (the baby's father) if I have no way of contacting him?" Garcia said after police confiscated her mobile phone at the hospital.

She claims that at first she wasn't sure about being a mother, but she had since changed her mind. "At first, I didn't know if she was ready to be a mom (…) I thought she made a mistake, but now I just want him here with me," she said.