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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Chinese immigrant who tried to kill herself by consuming rat poison and was charged with murder and attempted feticide days later when her newborn daughter died has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of criminal recklessness, a Class B misdemeanor.
Bei Bei Shuai’s plea agreement was announced this afternoon in Marion Superior Court and accepted by Judge Sheila Carlisle. Shuai will serve no additional jail time and was released from monitoring Friday afternoon.
She was to face trial beginning Sept. 3 in the State v. Bei Bei Shuai.
Carlisle said earlier Friday she was prepared to call as many as 200 potential jurors within about two weeks.
Shuai, 34 at the time, was charged after her newborn daughter died days after her delivery by emergency caesarian section at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Shuai had told friends that she consumed rat poison days earlier in an attempted suicide after the baby’s father jilted her when her pregnancy was almost at full term. Her friends persuaded her to seek medical attention.
After Shuai was charged, she spent 435 days in the Marion County Jail before a divided Court of Appeals ruled she should not be denied bail, and she ultimately was freed on $50,000 bond. One appellate court judge dissented, saying the grant of bond didn't go far enough and that she would dismiss the charges altogether.
This story will be updated.
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