Teen charged with murder in infant’s death

PORT ANGELES, Wash. – A 16-year-old girl suspected of drowning an infant boy in a toilet and throwing the body in the trash in Port Angeles has been charged with murder.

Lauryn Louise Last, of Port Angeles, was charged as an adult on Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of the infant believed to be her son and identified in charging papers as Baby Boy Last.

Last remained jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail with arraignment scheduled Friday. She faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Last’s attorney, Suzanne Hayden of the Clallam County public defender’s office, did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday afternoon.

The baby’s body was found Monday by authorities combing through 60 tons of trash at a dump site near Tacoma.

In an affidavit filed that day, Port Angeles police Detective Jesse Winfield alleged that Last “put her baby face down into a toilet and allowed it to drown for several minutes until it died. Then she threw her son into the trash can outside in a plastic garbage bag.”

Port Angeles Police Chief Terry Gallagher has said that DNA testing to confirm the infant’s parentage might not be available for a month or more.

Last’s father, Ronald Last Jr., 41, was charged Monday with being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of methamphetamine, both felonies, and with concealing a birth, a gross misdemeanor, the prosecutor added. He remained in the Clallam County jail.

Ronald Last has an extensive court record with civil and criminal cases dating from 1985 in King, Snohomish, Kitsap and Clallam counties, Gallagher said.

Investigators in Port Angeles, about 65 miles northwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula, believe the infant died after being born to the girl on or about Dec. 31, and then was put in the trash. Garbage from that day was in two containers that initially were taken to a transfer station in Tacoma, about 80 miles southeast of Port Angeles, for transshipment to Oregon.

The containers were then rerouted to a site in Graham, about eight miles southeast of Tacoma, to provide more room for the search that found the baby’s body.