A father has been charged with murder after his three-month-old daughter’s lifeless body was found in a wooded area close to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx – more than two weeks after he allegedly killed her and dumped her remains in a book bag among some trash.
Genevieve Comager’s body was found at around 8.25pm ET on Sunday evening at West 161st Street and the Major Deegan Expressway, following a tip-off from the little girl’s grandfather.
The NYPD said that emergency workers responded to the area – close to a transitional housing shelter where she lived with her parents – but the infant was pronounced dead at the scene.
Genevieve’s father Damion Comager, 23, was arrested and charged with murder and concealment of a corpse on Monday night, police said.
Her 20-year-old mother Ivana Paolozzi was also arrested and hit with charges of concealment of a corpse and obstructing governmental administration.
Officials are yet to confirm how and when the little girl died.
However, Mr Comager’s father Donald Comager and sources told The New York Post that the suspect “shook” his daughter when she wouldn’t stop crying.
Sources said that the 23-year-old admitted to shaking and slapping his daughter to get her to stop crying on 14 May.
When she became unresponsive, Mr Comager allegedly said he didn’t want to take her to hospital because of the marks around her neck.
Instead, he allegedly stuffed her body in a book bag and dumped her in the woods below a pedestrian overpass close to the baseball stadium.
Donald Comager, 47, told the Post that his son confided in him about Genevieve’s death on Sunday morning.
He allegedly told his father he had found the little baby “stiff” and “cold” in her bed after he had shaken her and panicked, before leaving her in the trash-strewn wooded area.
“He told me the baby was doing a lot of crying. She wouldn’t stop crying,” Donald Comager said.
“He said he just shook her and lay her down, and he lay down and went to sleep.
“He got up and reached for her and she was stiff and her body was cold. He panicked. He told his girlfriend, ‘I think she is dead.’”
After speaking to a priest on Sunday, Donald Comager said he decided he needed to “do the right thing”, revealing that it was him who turned his son into authorities.
Later that day – more than two weeks after Genevieve’s body was dumped in the wooded area – investigators made the grim discovery.
Genevieve’s cause and manner of death will now be determined by the medical examiner.
The two parents were initially taken into custody for questioning on Monday before charges were filed the next day.
As he was led out of the NYPD’s 44th Precinct in handcuffs after being charged on Monday, Mr Comager told reporters “I love my daughter” and called her death “a mistake”.
Mr Comager and Ms Paolozzi are now scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday for their arraignments.
