Student Who Left Baby to Die in Sorority Trash Gets Life

Emile Weaver apologized, but judge didn't buy her remorse
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 28, 2016 10:55 AM CDT
Student Who Left Baby to Die in Sorority Trash Gets Life
Emile Weaver looks at an exhibit during her trial in Muskingum County Common Pleas Court in Zanesville, Ohio, Wednesday, May 11, 2016.   (Chris Crook/Times Recorder via AP, Pool)

A former Ohio college student who gave birth in April 2015 and then left her daughter in a trash bag outside her on-campus sorority house to die was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday. "I stand before you a broken-down woman, asking for forgiveness and mercy," Emile Weaver, 21, said before her sentencing. "Words cannot express how sorry I am to my beautiful daughter Addison." Prosecutors said Weaver, then a student at Muskingum University, knew she was pregnant and still played sports and repeatedly fell on her stomach, drank alcohol, and smoked marijuana because she never planned to keep the baby. She was found guilty of aggravated murder and other charges in May. At her sentencing, the judge said he did not believe Weaver felt genuine remorse, the Zanesville Times Recorder reports.

Weaver put Addison in a small garbage can and then wrapped that in a trash bag, and the baby died of asphyxiation. "She could have had that child and let it lay on the floor of the bathroom, and it would still be alive," said the prosecutor. Sorority sisters found her body, and some wrote letters to the judge or testified about the impact the incident has had on their lives. One heard the baby crying early in the morning and didn't realize what was happening, and now says she wishes she'd broken the door down. After leaving Addison to die, Weaver texted the man she believed to be the girl's father with "no more baby" and "taken care of," NBC Chicago reports. "That was probably the most truthful statement you made that day," said the judge at Weaver's sentencing. "It was an inconvenience, and you took care of it." Weaver, who testified that she was in denial about the pregnancy and thought the baby was already dead when she put her in the trash, plans to appeal. (More child murder stories.)

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