A heartbreaking case of a newborn abandoned on a sub-freezing night in San Antonio has led to an arrest, a rescinded testimony about how the baby was found and increased public awareness of Texas’s Safe Haven Law, which allows parents to anonymously give up unharmed infants at designated locations across the city.
San Antonio police on Wednesday arrested a woman in connection with the abandonment of the newborn baby boy, who still had an umbilical cord attached when he was reportedly found outside in freezing temperatures Jan. 21.
But the baby wasn’t left in the snow that night, as police were told.
Ava Marie Guerra, 28, was arrested and charged with injury to a child and reckless serious bodily injury days after a 34-year-old man, who said he found the baby outside that night, confessed to making up the story, and admitted that he knew the mother of the baby and where the child was born, according to police records.
The infant is still in critical condition with life-threatening injuries — not related to the weather, but because of delayed umbilical cord clamping, Ximena Alvarez, a spokesperson with the San Antonio Police Department, said Wednesday.
The baby also had methamphetamine in his system when he was found, according to an affidavit obtained by the San Antonio Report.
Guerra was booked into Bexar County Jail on Wednesday, and posted bail the same day for $150,000.
The man told police he found the baby inside a basket and wrapped in a towel on Nolan and Cherry streets on the city’s near East Side, then drove to the 400 block of E. Commerce Street, where he approached an off-duty police officer still in uniform outside a downtown Whataburger at 3 a.m. and handed him the baby.
The arrest affidavit states the man told the officer he got lost driving around, but approached the first officer he saw because the baby needed medical attention immediately.
But through interviews, SAPD’s Special Victims Unit detectives discovered he wasn’t being truthful with his story and later confessed to knowing Guerra.
It is unclear if the man is related to the baby or if he will be facing charges after his changing statements to authorities.
According to the affidavit, Guerra was at least 36 weeks pregnant when she gave birth. She told detectives she discovered she was pregnant two months ago, but chose not to pursue prenatal medical care. She did not want to keep the baby, and she didn’t want to know the gender or the condition of the child, the affidavit states.
After she was questioned and released from the hospital for after birth care, Guerra stopped communicating and did not cooperate with police, according to the arrest affidavit.
“Due to the egregiousness of this crime and the belief the defendant is a possible flight risk from justice, [the officer] has reason to believe that [Guerra] is a danger to the victim and the public,” the officer wrote in the affidavit.
The sidewalk where the man said he allegedly found the baby wrapped in a towel and inside a basket was located at an intersection right across from San Antonio Fire Station #1, which is a Safe Haven location — meaning a place parents can legally surrender a baby younger than 60 days old.
The Safe Haven Law allows the parent to remain anonymous and does not charge them for abandonment, but requires face-to-face interaction with staff at the location.
It was amended in the last legislative session to also allow the parent to remain anonymous if a Safe Haven location has a newborn safety device, or baby box.
Though San Antonio fire stations and hospitals are Safe Haven locations, the city currently doesn’t have any Safe Haven baby boxes — a temperature-controlled box located outside a hospital, fire or EMS station, which allows a baby to be dropped off without face-to-face interaction. When the box is closed, an alarm alerts EMS, which arrives immediately after.
The city promised to invest $438,000 of its $3.7 billion budget to purchase a dozen boxes to place at local fire stations when the Baby Moses Law was signed in 2023.
Despite its promise to add them, San Antonio has no baby boxes yet, said Joe Arrington, spokesperson for the SAFD, and there’s no definitive timeline for them to be added.
The San Antonio Fire Department said adding the boxes is an evaluative process and takes time. Officials must evaluate which stations can accommodate the boxes due to construction needs or the physical suitability of the stations, Arrington said.
“The presence of these newly crafted boxes does not change the fact that all fire stations and hospitals in San Antonio are Safe Haven locations,” he explained.
Though those handoffs require face-to-face interaction with personnel at the Safe Haven locations, they are still anonymous and the parent will not be prosecuted for using the Safe Haven provision.
“A baby can be handed over to health care processionals at these locations. This has been the case for many years now. That is the key message we need to get across,” he said. “A physical box does not change anything about the fact that we can accept a baby 60 days or younger to ensure the child gets the care that it needs.”
The Safe Haven option
In November, a 38-year-old woman reportedly abandoned her baby after giving birth along a Northeast side trail. She was arrested and remains in the Bexar County Jail. The baby was recovered and is in Child Protective Services custody.
In December, a 33-year-old Converse woman was charged with abuse of a corpse after police say she tried to flush her dead baby down the toilet of a Whataburger bathroom. She also remains in jail.
That baby was named “Mary” by Pamela Allen, director of Eagle’s Flight Advocacy and Outreach, a nonprofit organization that supports families in crisis, who worked with legislators to pass the Baby Moses Law and organized a funeral to lay her to rest.
Baby Mary, who was born at least 28 weeks premature to a woman experiencing homelessness, was buried in a one-foot long casket on Jan. 25. She was the 65th burial that Eagle’s Flight has assisted with since it opened in 2012. Two were mothers killed by domestic violence, two were teens who committed suicide, and 61 of them have been children and infants.
“Some people point to the abortion law [for the abandonments]. Some people point to mental health. This is a huge mental health and substance abuse issue, but there’s a variety of factors in this,” Allen said.
For now, Allen said she’s asking Bexar County officials to roll out a public service campaign to help inform parents there is a legal way to avoid abandoning a child outdoors, or in an otherwise unsafe location, and avoid being charged.
“It’s frustrating. For me, our focus is to get the word out, to get brochures printed, to speak to the homeless to make sure they understand, these ladies do not have to abandon a baby,” she said. “They can take this baby to a fire station.”
