A house is cordoned off by police tape at 3846 Saanich Road in Victoria, where police are investigating a suspicious death. Victoria, Sept. 28, 2010.Deddeda Stemler for the Globe and Mail
A 20-year-old foreign-exchange student who was arrested after the remains of her newborn baby were discovered in a Saanich home will remain custody until an autopsy has determined what caused the child's death, police say.
"We're limited right now in what we can say, it really depends on the results of the coroner's investigation, which looks like it's going to occur in the next day or so," Saanich Police Sergeant Dean Jantzen said Tuesday. "No charges have been sworn as of yet."
The woman was arrested on Monday after "someone in the home" discovered the child's body and called police.
Sgt. Jantzen described the child as a "newborn infant," but declined to release its age or gender, saying those details won't be confirmed until the coroner's investigation is complete.
Sgt. Jantzen also refused to release the woman's name or nationality, saying only that she is "a foreign national and not a Canadian citizen."
Police have enlisted an interpreter to help communicate with the mother, he added.
The woman appeared before a justice of the peace via telephone on Tuesday afternoon, with police seeking an "investigative remand" to allow them to keep her in custody without charges for up to three days.
He called the death "suspicious" and said that although the investigation is continuing, investigators had enough evidence to justify an arrest.
Sgt. Jantzen wouldn't say how long the child had been dead, but suggested it may have been days rather than hours.
"The third-party complaint didn't come in as a 911 call, the person arrived after the fact," he said.
The caller was not the person police arrested, he added.
The owner of the recently renovated home at 3846 Saanich Rd., Gayle Floyd, had two female foreign exchange students "from Asia" living with her, said Kevin Galbraith of Welton Construction, the company that did the renovations. Mr. Galbraith said he'd heard news reports on Tuesday that a child lived at the address, but he had seen no sign of the infant during his visits to the home.
"It's weird, they said there was a baby in there, but whenever I was there, I didn't notice anything like that," he said, describing the students as "quiet and normal."
Mr. Galbraith, who was working on another house around the corner, said he spoke with Ms. Floyd around 9 a.m. Monday but hadn't seen her since the child's body was discovered.
Late Tuesday, the home was still surrounded by yellow police tape and guarded by a Saanich patrol officer. Calls to a G. Floyd listed at that address were picked up by an answering machine.
Special to The Globe and Mail