Gave birth on toilet and left baby there

Lush planters line the once- blighted block of Manton Street near 19th in Point Breeze, where the cacophony of construction workers renovating abandoned rowhouses has replaced the banter of drug dealers who've been run off.

But flowers and new facades couldn't camouflage the tragedy that unfolded behind the ornate front door of one rowhouse there early yesterday.

Sometime overnight, a 20-year-old woman squatted over a toilet, gave birth to a girl and left the infant submerged in the commode for an undetermined duration, said Lt. Philip Riehl of the homicide unit.

"She gave birth to the child while seated on the toilet, but she did not immediately remove the child" from the toilet, Riehl said.

The woman's grandmother called 911 shortly after 7 a.m., and the baby was declared dead at the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania at 7:20 a.m. The mother remained in stable condition there yesterday.

Police listed the case as a "suspicious death," and homicide detectives visited the home yesterday to investigate.

Police declined to release the woman's name, because she hasn't been charged.

The medical examiner's office was expected to perform an autopsy on the infant this morning to determine whether she was stillborn, and whether she was full-term. The infant's umbilical cord was still attached, Riehl said.

Neighbors and relatives said the mother insisted in recent months that she wasn't pregnant. She was plump, but she couldn't hide her burgeoning belly, one neighbor said.

"I know she was pregnant by my eyesight, but she told me she wasn't," said a neighbor who identified herself as the woman's aunt but who declined to give her name. "She didn't want to let no one know."

Neighbors said the mother grew up on the block and has lived with her grandmother there since her mother was murdered years ago.

The street, once a haven for dealers and hookers, has been turning around, neighbors said. A development company has bought at least three vacant rowhouses on the block; workers have gutted them and seemed to be midway through renovations yesterday.

"This is a quiet block. She's a nice girl," said surprised neighbor Barbara Jordan, who hadn't noticed the police cruiser parked at the curb nearby.

Another neighbor who asked to remain anonymous said she saw the woman get roughed up by her boyfriend - a neighborhood drug dealer - outside on the snowy street last winter.

"She appeared to me to be pregnant - a woman knows," said the neighbor, a mother of one. "But she was telling everyone she wasn't. This is a crying shame." *