Teen asked if she was in trouble after calling 911 to report she’d killed her baby

Monday morning, at approximately 10:25 am 17-year-old Amanda Gross called 911 and told the dispatcher, "I killed baby, take me to jail."

In speaking with the dispatcher, Gross' speech was described as hard to understand and slurred, and she gave a false address of Martin Luther King Drive.  Dispatchers however, pinged the phone call to an address on Georgia Street and directed the officers there.

The dispatcher asked how the child had died and Gross answered saying, "I slammed the baby down on the floor."

When they arrived, they found Gross in the stairwell of the apartment holding a limp baby in her arms. They noticed that Gross appeared to have a "bloodlike" substance on her lips and her hair was in disarray.

Corporal Jamal Joseph took the baby from her and handed him to his partner, Officer Jamal Milton who immediately began chest compressions. At the time of their arrival, the infant did not have a pulse in his wrist and his chest was not moving.

Not wanting to lose any time, Joseph put Gross in the cruiser and drove while Milton continued lifesaving measures. During the drive there, Gross is reported to have rubbed an officer's right arm and asked repeatedly, "Am I in trouble?"

Shortly after arrival at the Methodist Hospital in Gary, the infant was pronounced dead. The cause of death has not yet been released.

At the hospital, officers asked Gross several questions, including the baby's name and age. She told officers that he was 4 months old, but they later learned that Darius Whitley was 7-months-old and had been left in Gross' care for approximately an hour.

When asked her name and date of birth, officers were unable to understand her mumbled reply.

In response to the officers asking her what happened, she is said to have answered, "I killed my baby. Am I in trouble? It's 10 o'clock. Can I go? Is he ready? Am I in trouble?" She is said to have been smiling during the interview.

As officers spoke with medical staff at the hospital, Gross is said to have started laughing while no one was addressing her.

She has been booked into the Gary Police Department's Juvenile Division where she is being held whiteout bond on a charge of murder.  Court records do not indicate that she has made an appearance or entered a plea at this time.

NWI indicates that the Darius' mother and grandmother had left the baby in Gross' care while they went out, with the baby's older siblings, to pick up another woman. The grandmother is, according to NWI Gross' guardian, and according to the Tribune, her foster mother.

The investigation is ongoing and updates in this case are likely to follow.