Alexandra Eckersley, daughter of MLB Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley, is facing felony charges after abandoning her newborn baby in the woods in New Hampshire according to reports.
The 26-year-old woman was charged with felony reckless conduct and endangering the welfare of a child, second-degree assault with extreme indifference and falsifying physical evidence.
Alexandra allegedly is homeless and had been living in a tent in the woods in New Hampshire, where she gave birth at some point early Monday morning. Police responded to a call about a woman giving birth and Alexandra originally gave the police the wrong location of the tent with the newborn baby.
When Tragedy Strikes
“The search was difficult. It was dark, we had cold temperatures—about 18 degrees last night and we were not getting accurate information,” Manchester Fire District Chief John Starr said, according to local news outlet WCVB.
According to an affidavit cited by WCVB, Eckersley told police she did not know she was pregnant and admitted to using cocaine and marijuana in the days before the baby’s birth.
The newborn baby weighs just 4 pounds, and was intubated at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover and is receiving care. The baby is improving according to officials at the medical center.
“There’s no excuse for this,” Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said, according to WCVB. “If you choose to live in the woods and choose to live your life a particular way, and you don’t want accept our outreach that goes every day in this city—and you want to live out there and do that with your life—fine. But you don’t get to do this, what we’re alleging here. You don’t get to do this to a child.”
Of course everyones concern is with the newborn baby, and rightfully so. But the idea that anyone chooses to be homeless, live in the woods and give birth in a tent is dangerous.
That’s the default answer in our society. People who live in squalor or who abuse drugs or in any other way live in terrible conditions, choose to do so.
Aldenberg is correct in saying that outreach is provided to people everyday in these situations. But have we examined what that particular outreach looks like? How well funded are shelters and programs designed to help people like this? Are the people that work on behalf of these outreach services given everything they need to be successful?
This of course is a larger issue about how society treats its vulnerable and impoverished population.
Officials said Eckersley’s mom, Nancy, told authorities that she and Dennis offered their homeless daughter drug treatment for years, but she refused.
“They had an open offer for her to come home on the condition that she go to treatment for drug use, and she obviously made the choice not to,” Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Carl Olson reportedly said.
Dennis Eckersley was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004. He played 24 seasons in the MLB.
He was a six-time All-Star, and won the AL MVP award and the AL Cy Young Award in 1992. He was named the ALCS MVP in 1988, and won a World Series with the Athletics in 1989.
