The Lakeland woman police were looking for on Friday, Neha Patel, 32, was found and arrested Friday afternoon at Tampa International Airport. Police found her SUV on the 4th level of a long-term parking garage.
They had been looking for Patel and wanted to question her about the death of her 1-year-old baby boy. Early Friday morning she had admitted killing the boy to her husband.
After finding and arresting Patel, officials released more disturbing details about what happened.
Detectives said Patel was very candid with them and said that she has hated her baby since the day he was born and she blamed him for everything.
She said she and Ishan were at home alone Thursday in the living room and Ishan was playing with the remote to the TV.
He then turned to his mother and began crawling to her but she slapped him in the face twice because she didn’t want him coming near her.
After hitting the boy, she put the baby down for a nap, and when he woke up, she put him in the bathtub, filled if half way with water and left him alone in the tub for 10 minutes.
When she went back into the bathroom to take her son out of the tub, she found him unconscious and even though she knew CPR, she told detectives, she didn’t try to revive him.
Mrs. Patel then dressed Ishan, put him in the SUV and went to a Publix parking lot near their home but then went back to their house and said she knew the baby was dead because he was cold and had turned blue.
Patel then decided to drive to Ocala, then Tampa International Airport.
She told detectives she drove to the airport to kill herself by jumping off the roof of the parking garage but couldn’t because there were too many people around so she drove back home to Lakeland.
When she got back home, her husband, Rasesh, demanded to know where she had been and what was wrong with the baby.
Mrs. Patel took the baby to his room, placed him in his crib and eventually told her husband the baby drowned.
She also told detectives that she got mad at her husband after he began calling her relatives and said she was leaving because she didn’t want to go jail and was going to commit suicide instead. She then drove back to the airport, again planning to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of a parking garage.
