USC Student Charged in Infant's Death

Police said the full-term boy was born alive before he was put in a cardboard box and placed in the trash bin near a popular USC hangout -- and Ashcraft's off-campus apartment -- late Sunday. A homeless man searching the bin for recyclables discovered the child and called police, authorities said.

Ashcraft, 21, a USC architecture student from Billings, Mont., made a brief court appearance Thursday, looking calm and responding in a clear voice to questions from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Sotelo about whether she understood the proceedings. Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Ashcraft made no comment other than to answer "yes" and nod in response to the questions.

At the request of prosecutors, who described her as a flight risk, Sotelo raised Ashcraft's bail from $1 million to $2 million. "She is a student from out of state and she has no ties to the community," Deputy Dist. Atty. Efrain Aceves said outside court.

He said Ashcraft was charged with child abuse, in addition to murder, because she is believed to have placed the infant in "circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm and death."

Attorney Adam S. Franken of Tustin, who represented Ashcraft in court, declined to answer reporters' questions. The young woman's arraignment was postponed to Nov. 9 after Franken told the judge that the attorney who will be in charge of her case could not be present Thursday.

A man and a woman who said they were "sort of" relatives of Ashcraft also refused to answer questions. Other family members or USC students did not appear to be present.

Outside the nearly empty courtroom, prosecutors, police and people acquainted with Ashcraft said they were at a loss to explain the circumstances that allegedly led her to place her son in the trash bin. And several said they wondered whether, as an out-of-state resident, she was even aware of a California law that allows a mother to relinquish an unwanted newborn at any hospital or fire station, with no questions asked.

Los Angeles Fire Station No. 15 is about two blocks from where the child was found.

"That's the tragedy of this case," Aceves said. "The public needs to be aware that there is this law."