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COPS PROBE POSSIBLE DNA LINK TO DEAD INFANTS

A DNA test is being conducted to determine if a newborn boy found dead on a Bushwick street last month is related to a dead girl found just yards away 2½ years ago.

The discovery of the child two weeks ago sent shock waves through the 83rd Precinct, where cops still talk emotionally about Angelica Evergreen, the abandoned newborn they buried in March 1997 after naming her for the avenue on which she was found.

Now, they intend to do the same for the boy.

They’ve decided that even if DNA tests reveal the two didn’t come from the same mother, the tots are – in a way befitting life in the city’s tougher neighborhoods – brother and sister.

“We’ve named him Angel Evergreen,” said Officer Jane Penney. “It’s like he’s part of her family.”

Penney and Officer Carmen Collazo had themselves appointed legal guardians of Baby Angelica after a teenager found her body in a gym bag left atop a garbage bin on Evergreen Avenue.

The officers and other cops and detectives at the precinct helped raise money for the child’s baptism and funeral, and Evergreen Cemetery donated a plot for her burial.

In the months that followed, police chased tantalizing clues – a Snapple bottle that was filled with flowers and left at the baby’s grave site and a letter sent to the officers, presumably from the mother, thanking them for their deeds. But the mother was never found.

A passerby discovered Angelica’s “brother” Nov. 15 inside a laundry bag on Stanhope Street, just around the corner from Evergreen.

The infant, wrapped in a gray towel and wearing an adult-sized black T-shirt, still had part of his umbilical cord attached, police said.

The cause of his death has not yet been determined.

Lt. John Corbisiero, head of the precinct’s detective squad, said the medical examiner is performing DNA tests to determine if Angel is related to Angelica.

“It’s weird that he was found so close to the other child,” Corbisiero said. “And it really bothers us because it’s a child and because we didn’t solve the first one.”