The remains of a newborn baby were found at a Massachusetts recycling plant on Thursday, prosecutors said Friday as police investigated. It's the second infant found dead at the facility this year.
Rochester police initially announced the investigation, saying only that the department was investigating what was believed to be the remains of a baby. They said in a social media post Thursday that a 911 caller had reported the discovery of "what appeared to be the body of a human baby in the recycling products" at Harvey Waste on Cranberry Highway.
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Police responded to the call around 10:40 a.m., Rochester police said. Processing at the plant, formerly known as Zero Waste Solutions, was stopped as authorities investigated.
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On Friday morning, the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office announced that state police were investigating the newborn's death after a 10:40 a.m. 911 call from the Zero Waste Solutions recycling facility.
"The caller reported that infant remains were found within a trash collection that was trucked to the facility for disposal," the office said in a statement.
The medical examiner was working to determine how the baby died, officials said. They asked anyone with information about what happened to contact state police detectives at 508-894-2648.
"It's a tragic event," Wareham Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Haskell said. "There's obviously better ways to deal with something like that."
An employee at Harvey confirmed that the facility is the same one where the remains of a newborn baby girl were found in April.
"It's such a tragedy that this happened the first time, and to see it happen again, it's really heartbreaking," Noelle Ozimek of the National Safe Haven Alliance said Friday.
The circumstances of the child's death are unknown, but Massachusetts' Safe Haven Act may have been an alternative for someone in crisis. The law allows parents to leave children 7 days old or younger at a hospital, police station or staffed fire station without fear of criminal prosecution.
"Any staffed fire station, police station, EMS facility, hospital, no questions asked," Haskell said. "Child comes, we take it, and we take care of it, medical attention, whatever it needs."
The mother of that child was believed to have been on Martha's Vineyard — the girl's remains were discovered in trash that appeared to have come from Martha's Vineyard, state police said at the time.
But no arrests or major updates were announced in that investigation. Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois had asked anyone who noticed a friend or loved one who was pregnant around April 20 and was longer to contact them, telling NBC10 Boston at the time there were concerns about her welfare.
"This is a type of case, as you might imagine, pulls on everybody's heartstrings, including mine, my investigators," he said. "It's incredibly emotional. So we're hopeful that ultimately, someone will step up and provide us some information about the well-being, location, and ID of the mom."
NBC10 Boston's Eli Rosenberg contributed to this report.
