PORT ANGELES ¬– A 16-year-old Port Angeles girl accused of downing her newborn son in a toilet bowl pleaded not guilty to murder on Friday.
Lauryn Louise Last is charged with first-degree murder with an alternative for second-degree murder in the Dec. 30 death of her son.
A five-day trial, in which she will tried as an adult, is scheduled to begin on March 2.
Defense attorney Suzanne Hayden entered the not guilty plea during an arraignment in Clallam County Superior Court.
Judge S. Brooke Taylor asked Last if she understood the plea.
“I’ll accept and enter your not guilty plea,” Taylor told Last, who was shackled and wearing an orange jump suit.
A status hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. Feb. 6.
Last is being held in the Clallam County Juvenile Services Detention Facility on $500,000 bail.
After entering the plea, Hayden asked the judge for an order, called a civil standby, that would have a police officer stand by to keep the peace while Last’s mother, Dawn Harris, retrieved items from the 12th Street house where Lauryn Last was staying.
The girl had moved from Pueblo, Colo., where Harris lives, to her father’s home in Port Angeles in October.
Police in Pueblo requested unnamed articles from the house, and the people staying there will not give Harris permission to claim the items, Hayden told the judge.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Ann Lundwall, who was filling in for lead prosecutor Deb Kelly on Friday, she knew nothing about the request.
Taylor postponed the civil standby issue to 9 a.m. Tuesday, when lawyers from both sides would be available.
“I think that’s reasonable,” Taylor said. “Ms. Lundwall has been blind-sided a little bit here.”
Lauryn Last and her father, Ronald. E. Last, were arrested on Jan. 2.
Father charged
Ronald Last has been charged with felony possession of a firearm and possession of methamphetamine, as well as the gross misdemeanor of concealing birth. He posted $10,000 bail on Jan. 7.
Searchers found the infant’s body on Jan. 5 in a 30-ton trash bin in Graham outside of Tacoma. The trash had been taken there from Port Angeles.
Investigators say that the child’s body had been put in the trash outside the 12th Street home.
Hayden has said that her client didn’t know she was in labor, and that she went into shock after giving birth on a toilet.
She called the infant’s death a horrible tragedy, and said that charging the girl with first-degree murder as an adult is inappropriate.
Police have said that the girl was impregnated by a man in his 30s in Colorado.
The maximum punishment for first-degree murder is life in prison and a $50,000 fine.
The child was named Thomas Loy Last by his grandmother, Dawn Harris, said Douglas Ticknor, director at Drennan & Ford Funeral Home, which had a service for the newborn last week.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at @rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com
