A woman was arrested Wednesday in Mountain View after an autopsy revealed that an infant boy she claimed was stillborn was actually alive at birth and died from "significant injuries."
31-year-old Jennifer Tupper is in custody and is suspected of killing her newborn son and discarding the remains outside her home. Mountain View police say that a friend of Tupper's called the Mountain View Police Department Emergency dispatch center on Monday around 2:30 p.m. and said that her friend had just given birth and the baby was stillborn.
As KPIX reports, police officers arrived at the home on the 2000 block of Leghorn Street and found the baby "discarded" outside the home. Paramedics took Tupper to the hospital for treatment, and Mountain View detectives began investigating the case, under the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Protocol. An autopsy would reveal that the infant sustained serious injuries after being born alive.
Tupper was subsequently arrested Wednesday after being released from the hospital. Police say they believe Tupper acted alone.
"We all know just how vulnerable babies are and innocent they are so it hits home on a lot of different fronts for a lot of us," says Mountain View Police Chief Chris Hsiung, speaking to KTVU.
Mountain View Police Sgt. David Fisher tells KTVU that the friend who called police about the birth seemed to have suspicions of her own.
"She got that funny feeling when she wasn’t getting full information so she made a call to the county communications," Fisher says.
After interviewing Tupper, Fisher says, "She made varying statements that were somewhat consistent with what she told, with what the friend told us but there was also several inconsistencies as well."
According to KTVU, Tupper is divorced and moved to the Bay Area from Washington sometime recently. A Facebook page that appears to belong to Tupper listed her location as Vista, California, in San Diego County, and it showed her working as a colorist and salon manager at a hair salon in Kennewick, Washington as of 2019.
Mountain View police say they are still trying to gather information about the infant's father.
Photo via Mountain View Police Department
