Homeless woman who allegedly left newborn misdirected searchers for fear she'd lose her tent
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Dec. 27—The homeless woman accused of leaving her hours-old baby alone in her Manchester tent was fearful of losing the tent, so she misdirected a police search away from the site, according to a police affidavit filed in Hillsborough County Superior Court.
Alexandra Eckersley, 26, daughter of former Red Sox pitching great Dennis Eckersley, and her boyfriend also decided to turn off the propane heat in the tent, which sheltered the baby, while they waited outside for an ambulance, according to the document.
Alexandra Eckersley's public defender gave a vastly different description of what happened after Eckersley gave birth to the boy in a tent shortly after midnight Monday on the West Side near the Piscataquog River. Eckersley told police she hadn't known she was pregnant.
The baby is currently hospitalized. Police have said he is expected to survive.
Among new details that came out Tuesday:
Authorities filed an affidavit that describes Eckersley as likely on drugs, unsteady on her feet and thrashing from side to side as they tried to get her to say where the baby was. She admitted to using cocaine about two days before the birth.
Police later spoke to her mother, Nancy Eckersley, who said Alexandra has an open invitation to return home and live with her parents as long as she enters drug treatment, according to the prosecutor who handled the arraignment, Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Carl Olson. She has refused, he said.
Eckersley was the one who called 911 about the baby, and a propane heater, paid for by her mother, was running at the tent at one point, though she and her boyfriend decided to turn it off while waiting for the ambulance.
Superior Court Judge Diane Nicolosi ruled that Eckersley could be released into a residential drug treatment program. Otherwise, she will have to post $3,000 cash bail to get out of jail and live at either her parents' home, a sober home or anywhere approved by a judge or prosecutor. Either way, Eckersley can have no contact with her baby.
Her public defender said Eckersley did everything she could and was suffering from blood loss, a premature, unattended birth and possible hypothermia when police arrived. "She did what she had to do to get help. Childbirth is incredibly dangerous even under the best of circumstances," said public defender Jordan Strand.
The baby weighed 4.4 pounds and is an estimated three months premature. Rescuers performed emergency breathing on the child, who was initially taken to Catholic Medical Center and then Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where he is intubated, Olson said.
Although out on bail on child-endangerment charges involving baby-sitting, Eckersley does not have an extensive criminal record.
Authorities say they expect to charge her boyfriend, identified in court papers as George Theberge, 45.
Details of birth, search
The affidavit filed in court described a frantic search by police and rescue workers after they received a call about the birth. Police found Eckersley in the ambulance, and she had told EMT workers she had just given birth.
She pointed them toward baseball fields near the West Side Ice Arena, but "it was apparent Eckersley had no idea where the child may be," the affidavit read. Police requested the use of a drone, and they also called in New Hampshire State Police cadaver dogs, believing the search would eventually involve a dead child.
The temperature was about 15 degrees.
Eckersley assisted in the search and returned to the ambulance to warm up after an hour. She spoke with an EMT and directed searchers to the other side of the footbridge toward Goffstown.
Olson said Eckersley changed her mind after having a heart-to-heart conversation with an EMT. Strand said Eckersley had time to warm up, think more clearly and give an accurate location of her tent.
Eckersley had an explanation for not taking the baby with her while she waited for an ambulance: "What do they tell you to do when a plane goes down? Save yourself first."
The tent consisted of one small tent inside a larger one. The sleeping area, where the baby was found, had a large amount of blood and several blankets. Police found the baby lying on the ground next to the bed behind a blanket, the affidavit read. Olson said rescuers performed rescue breathing on the child.
Eckersley told police that the baby cried for less than a minute after birth, and Theberge believed the baby didn't have a pulse.
She told police she was concerned about losing her tent.
"Eckersley was stating that it is very hard to survive if they had lost their tent because of the cold temperatures during the winter in Manchester," the affidavit read. She also said she and Theberge decided to tell police that the birth took place at the athletic fields so police would not find their tent.
That fear may have been misplaced. Homeless shelters in the city are full, and the city is not clearing homeless camps, according to Adrienne Beloin, the city's director of homelessness initiatives.
"On city property, we're not clearing anyone at this time. We don't think it's in anybody's interest," Beloin said. Camping is forbidden in city parks, but the area where Eckersley was camping does not fall into that category, she said.
Eckersley is homeless and suffers from mental illness, according to a 2019 profile of her in the Concord Monitor. The article quoted her parents, and the Eckersley family confirmed at that time that she is their daughter.
Reporter Jonathan Phelps contributed to this report.