Detectives are building a “huge case” against the Victoria Secret shoplifter as they anxiously await the autopsy results on the teen’s baby found dead inside her shopping bag, law enforcement sources said Thursday.
Investigators believe that Tiona Rodriguez, 17, killed her baby a day after she says she gave birth, but the DA’s Office won’t bring homicide charges until the medical examiner’s office makes its final determination, sources said.
“Detectives have been interviewing neighbors and friends and they subpoenaed her social media accounts,” said one law enforcement source. “They are building a huge case so she can’t get away with it.”
One concern is that Rodriguez will claim she didn’t intend to kill the baby, says the source.
“That’s why they are building such a strong case to show what was her capable state of mind,” the source added.
On Oct. 18, Rodriguez and her friend, Francis Estevez, 17, were caught pilfering lingerie by a security guard in the Herald Square Victoria’s Secret store, cops said.
When the guard peered inside the bag Rodriguez was carrying, he made the grisly discovery – finding the stillborn baby wrapped in clothing with a “rancid smell,” another police source said.
The corpse “looked very clean — it looked as if it had been washed or drowned,” that source said.
The source added that the previous day Rodriguez had been in the bathroom for a long period of time, possibly for two hours.
Rodriguez, who has a two year child and lives in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, spontaneously told the guard that she had a miscarriage, the source said.
Responding cops brought Rodriguez to the Midtown South station house, where she was slapped with a charge of petit larceny.