COUNTY NEWS: Woman who killed newborn baby set to walk free

Police outside a house in Aldwick Road, Bognor, in April last year. Picture by Eddie Mitchell

Gintare Suminaite, 30, of Aldwick Road, Bognor Regis, had faced a murder charge but prosecutors accepted her guilty plea for infanticide on December 21.

She appeared at the Old Bailey on Monday, January 30, for sentencing.

Having spent 298 days on remand, Suminaite was handed a community order which also includes a rehabilitation requirement order, police said.

Prosecutor Ed Brown QC asked for the murder charge to lie on file.

According to Sussex Police, the Old Bailey heard that an ambulance was called to an address in Aldwick Road, Bognor, at 8.37am on April 6 last year.

The baby girl was confirmed dead at the scene and her mother Suminaite was taken to St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester requiring urgent medical treatment, police said.

The charge stated Suminaite caused the death of her daughter ‘by compression of the neck with a ligature or by manual compression of the neck’, police added.

Detective chief inspector Tanya Jones of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team said: “This was an extremely sad and distressing case for all those involved.”

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