A Long Island woman who works as a live-in maid killed her newborn daughter and threw her body in the garbage, according to authorities. She has since been arrested and will be charged with murder.
Prosecutors say that 26-year-old Santos Elena Ruiz Solano, a housekeeper who lives in her employer's $1.3 million mansion in West Islip, gave birth to a baby girl on Sunday inside the home. Then, she allegedly killed the infant before stuffing the newborn's body in a plastic bag. Later, cops say she and her husband sought medical attention for post-birth complications at a local hospital, tossing the plastic-wrapped body in the trash nearby. Police officers recovered the body in a garbage can outside the hospital, noting it had suffered a fractured skull and died at the scene.
The owner of the home in which Ruiz Solano lived, 64-year-old Raymond Figalora, is a senior home-loan officer for a Michigan bank; he reportedly denied knowing her, and authorities say she had only been employed at the house for three weeks. "She’s a live-in housekeeper that’s worked there only a short period of time and went to her room that evening and was not seen again until her husband showed up to take her to the hospital,” Suffolk County Police Lieutenant Jack Fitzpatrick told CBS News. "She secretly delivered this baby and had not advised her husband or any others that she was pregnant."
Ruiz Solano, who has two children who live in Honduras, is expected to be arraigned on second-degree murder charges today.
