Couple arrested for dumping body of baby boy

Police arrested a young couple early Thursday on suspicion of abandoning the body of a boy who was recently identified as a 1-year-old from Toyonaka in the prefecture. The arrest of Mika Tamiya, 21, and her husband Motoki, comes just a day after police identified the boy as Yu Minematsu, whose body was found in a roadside gutter in the town of Nose in the prefecture last month, they said.

The two have both admitted to the charge. Mika was identified to be the boy's mother through a DNA analysis, they said. The two told the police they "put the boy in a space to hold helmets on a motorcycle because two people cannot go out on a bike while holding a child." They said the boy was dead when they returned, according to police. The body was naked, with its head in a blue plastic bag, police said. It had no external injuries and an autopsy also failed to pinpoint the cause of the boy's death.