A death investigation is underway after a newborn baby was discovered inside a freezer at an apartment in the Back of the Yards neighborhood — a case that has raised troubling questions and conflicting timelines between city agencies.
According to the Chicago Police Department (CPD), officers responded to an apartment building in the 4700 block of South Damen around midnight Tuesday, where they found an unresponsive infant. The child was pronounced dead shortly after at Stroger Hospital, police said in a statement.
“Area One Detectives are investigating the circumstances involving the incident and conducting a death investigation,” CPD said. “There are no further details available at this time.”
But details provided by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and a law enforcement source appear to contradict that timeline.
Dispatch records show that it was Stroger Hospital staff who first contacted police—and that call came at 7:20 p.m. Monday, several hours before the CPD-reported discovery. Investigators then obtained permission to search the apartment on South Damen later that same evening.
The medical examiner’s office, which identified the child only as “Baby Flores,” did not specify the infant’s sex or age, but listed the time of death as 10:45 p.m. It remains unclear whether the baby was born prematurely, or how long the child had been inside the freezer.
No charges have been announced as of Wednesday morning, and the CPD has yet to clarify the discrepancies in the reported timeline.
The grim discovery has shaken the community and raised urgent questions about the baby’s identity, cause of death, and the circumstances that led to this tragic scene in a South Side apartment freezer.