Baby 'may have been injected with heroin' before being dumped in rubbish bag

The baby's mother was a known heroin user. Photo / 123RF

A heroin-addicted mother may have injected her baby with the drug before dumping the child's corpse in a rubbish bag, police say.

The tragic case occurred in the US state of New Mexico, with the infant's father calling police after he returned home from a trip and found his partner was no longer pregnant but would not tell him where the baby was.

Police launched an investigation and visited the couple's trailer home.

During an interview, the woman repeatedly passed out with police saying in an affidavit that "her statements were inconsistent and not making logical sense".

She claimed she had passed out from the pain of childbirth and found the child unresponsive.

Police entered the trailer where officers "smelled the smell of death and began to look for the newborn baby".

After a search they found the child's body inside a rubbish bag dumped next to the toilet.

The father told investigators that he was told the mother had injected the baby with the deadly drug in an effort to stave off withdrawal symptoms.

An autopsy will be performed to determine the child's manner of death and police are waiting for those results before charges are laid.