A newborn baby boy was discovered inside a trash compactor by sanitation workers in Houston, authorities said.
Waste collection workers were servicing a residential neighborhood in northwest Houston when they “discovered what appears to be a deceased newborn male infant amongst the collected trash waste,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a post on X Wednesday morning.
Deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office were alerted of “sanitation technicians finding what they believe to be a infant baby in the back of a trash compactor inside the truck” around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Gonzalez said, speaking to the media .
The baby’s body was discovered when the workers stopped to compact the trash after they had done collections over several streets, Gonzalez said.
Authorities arrived on scene to find the infant, believed to be between one and 30 days old, inside the bottom of the trash compactor, Gonzalez said. The sheriff said the child was not a miscarriage and appeared to be full term. It is not clear how long the child had been dead before it was discovered.