TYLER, Texas — Arrest documents allege that a Longview woman accused of putting her dead newborn in a Tyler-area backyard gave birth to the child into toilet before placing the baby outside and later falling asleep.
Jazzlyn Nukenya Cooper-Holmes, 23, of Longview, was arrested Saturday, March 18, for abuse of a corpse without legal authority. She remains in the Smith County Jail on a $1 million bond.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 15, deputies responded to a home on the 18000 block of US Highway 69 North, near Tyler, on reports of a newborn baby being found dead at the location.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, a Smith County deputy found the infant wrapped in a brown towel next to a red mop bucket. During an interview at the Smith County Sheriff's Office, Cooper-Holmes said the deceased baby in the yard was hers.
She told the deputy she gave birth to the baby on March 12 around 4 a.m. She said she was standing over the toilet so that the baby would go into the toilet, according to the affidavit.
Cooper-Holmes told deputies the baby went head first into the toilet and she only looked at the baby once. She then took a brown towel, wrapped the baby up and placed the child in the mop bucket.
Once she was outside, she said she placed the baby on the ground. She went back inside to clean up the remains of birth, according to the document.
After doing that, she checked on the baby once and returned to her room, where she fell asleep. After that, officials say she never went outside to check on the welfare of the child, the affidavit said.
In the interview, Cooper-Holmes said she contacted the suspected father of the child through Snapchat saying, "I was pregnant.....that cant happen again I cant be pregnant," according to the affidavit.
Prior to giving birth, she had preordered bedsheets, feminine hygiene products and Tylenol, the document read.