The mother of a newborn baby girl who was found lying in a box in North Philadelphia on Dec. 21 was arrested Wednesday afternoon on attempted murder charges, Officer Jillian Russell, a police spokeswoman, said.
Patricia “Dina” Crawley, 33, was arrested around 3:45 p.m. on Croskey Street near Lehigh Avenue.
Police issued a warrant for the woman on Feb. 15, saying she had initially been questioned by officials in the Special Victims Unit, but was not named as a suspect until DNA evidence linked her to the baby.
A group of men who were doing a neighborhood clean up on 27th Street near Cumberland found the newborn baby girl in a cardboard box and called police.
The girl’s umbilical cord was still attached, and the men only noticed the child after she began to cry.
The girl, known as “Baby Noel,” was hospitalized for 10 days at St. Christopher’s Hospital, and has since been in foster care, police said.
Somebody just woke up.....!— Bill E. Penn- Hog tie her and leave her in a box on a north philly street.— TakingAstand
- Wow...looks like she also abandoned a hair brush.— Bill E. Penn
- Like the old saying goes, only a face a mother could love.— TomM
- crackhead .......— RufusG
- Is that a pix of a man or what? She looks like she's awfully angry. LOL— Thugbuster
- the baby is better off anyway.— snort_richmond
Comment removed.- Animals impregnate men all the time. lol— Thugbuster
- It is so sad that thanks to Bush and the criminal Republicans, everyone wants to disparage this women prior to trial and convict her already, without taking into account what the Bush Administration did to minorities and women, and especially minority women. Bush should be charged as an accessory and convicted for what he did to women, children, minorities, and gays. Yet all the Republicans tell you to do is blame the black President because, well, "he's black, and them thar darkies are the cause of everything!"— eldiablodelsol2009
- No fan of Bush here, but has nothing to do with anyone but the mother. The POS abandoned her child in the cold. She looks like a dirty punk full of attitude.
And if you hate Republicans, don't sound like them. This is the kind of post I'd expect from Kelprod.— wokmaster - Comment removed.
- huh Eldiablod? What does this have to do with Bush? A woman abandons a defenseless baby in a box and you find some way to blame it on Bush? This woman was probably mentally ill, and if you want to go back to the closing of the mental hospitals then fine, but that was well before Bush. Your hate of Bush is starting to cloud your judgement, its not healthy.— towelie
- Nat Geo.— Black Label Society
- Definitely a drug addict and/or mentally ill. She needs to be incarcerated. If the baby had died, it would be murder.— nikki1231
Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.
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Stephanie Farr has been reporting for the Daily News since 2007, covering everything from gay porn stars who entered the burglary business to moon trees, skinheads, murders and naked bike rides. She covers crime, both in the city and suburbs, and keeps clippings of bizarre Associated Press articles. Her favorite this year was the story about the drunk in Punxsutawney who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum. E-mail tips to farrs@phillynews.com.
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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.
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Morgan Zalot is the newest crime reporter at the Daily News, starting in 2011 after interning at the paper twice as a Temple University journalism student. In her past stints at the DN, she covered just about everything, from drunken Phillies fans to a barber shop in a high school to a grisly murder-suicide. She’s a born-and-raised Philly girl who grew up in the Northeast. E-mail tips to zalotm@philly.com.
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