Mom Accused of Throwing Her Newborn Out a Window Was "Sweet and Shy and Quiet"
A Bronx mother accused of killing one newborn and under investigation for the mysterious death of another was so shy she would “smile and blush” when people looked at her, a classmate tells the New York Times.
Jennifer Berry, a 33-year-old former social worker, was arrested this week after cops found her newborn daughter dead in an alley, umbilical cord still attached. Investigators say she tossed the child out of a seventh-story window, where she died from blunt force injuries.
It’s not the first child of Berry’s to die abruptly—cops say they’re also investigating the 2008 death of her son, which was, at the time, ruled a natural death caused by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
But according to the New York Times, Berry hid the details of her latest pregnancy from her friends and family, telling them she had miscarried weeks before the birth. Now friends tell the paper they’re shocked by the accusations levied against her.
“All I can remember is how sweet and shy and quiet she was in high school,” Gillian Gabie-Lyons, a classmate from Dobbs Ferry High School told the Times. “You look at her, and she would smile and blush.”
“Softest spoken girl I ever met in my life,” another classmate told the paper. “She might’ve been voted friendliest in class, that’s how nice she was. I never heard her say ‘boo.’ She didn’t have a temper.”
Berry, who is facing second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, is due back in court later this month.
