Newborn Baby Tossed Out Window : Arrest: Eighteen-year-old Santa Ana mother is taken into custody after officers find four-pound boy in alley.

SANTA ANA — Hours after delivering her own baby early Thursday, a Santa Ana woman tossed the newborn from a bathroom window, police said.

Police officers found the four-pound infant wrapped in a white T-shirt and crying as he lay in a small patch of dirt and grass in an alley about five feet below the first-story window. The infant, not yet cleaned from the birth, was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he was in stable condition, Lt. Robert Helton said.

The 18-year-old mother, Maria Bonilla, spoke to officers in her apartment on Santa Ana Boulevard, telling them that she delivered the child alone in a bathtub shortly after midnight.

Bonilla was taken to a local hospital before being transferred to the jail ward at Western Medical Center-Anaheim, Helton said. Bonilla, listed in good condition, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, felony child endangerment and child abandonment, Helton said.

Police investigators declined to provide details of how Bonilla delivered the child and did not know the identity of the child’s father, Helton said.

Neighbors near where the baby was discovered said they were shocked that the screaming they heard was from a newborn baby.

“I looked out my window and saw a little thing wrapped in white and thought, ‘That can’t be a baby,’ ” said neighbor Elvira Torres, whose bedroom window looks out over the alley.

The family who shared their small apartment with Bonilla slept while the young woman was giving birth in the bathroom, they said.

Marta Rosa Hernandez, 40, who said she allowed Bonilla to live rent-free with her and her family beginning five months ago, said, Thursday: “I don’t know why she would do this. It baffles me how this could have happened.”

Hernandez said she knew little of Bonilla or her background but allowed her to move in “because it’s difficult for a pregnant woman to live alone. I don’t know anything of where she came from or her experiences,” Hernandez said. “She did not tell me anything. . . . She rarely spoke.”

Hernandez said she asked Bonilla on several occasions if she wanted to go to a clinic before giving birth, but the teen-ager declined.

When doctors determine that the child can be moved, the hospital and county Juvenile Court officials will determine who will care for him, officials said.

Adolescent psychologists and child abuse workers said several factors can prompt a new parent to severely neglect a child.

“What we see are a lack of good role models when they grow up. They don’t have support systems, friends they can turn to or family to turn to,” said Jody Aguirre of the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, a private group in Orange which works with abused children and abusive parents. “A lot of times (parents) sense a feeling of helplessness,” Aguirre said.

Countywide, the number of reported child abuse cases has increased, according to the Orange County Child Services Department.

During the fiscal year ending in June, there were 27,379 cases investigated for child abuse, an increase of more than 2,000 from the previous year, county records show.

Orange County statistics mirror an increase nationwide in reported child abuse, said Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect in El Monte. From 1990 to 1991, the number of reported cases jumped 200,000, to 2.7 million, Durfee said.

But officials said Bonilla’s alleged act of throwing a newborn baby out a window is uncommon.

“This is a rare case,” said Dr. Charles Grob, a UCI psychologist. “Nevertheless they do occur and we have to try to understand why they occur.”