Infant, baby-sitter die in Huntington

Police investigating the deaths in Huntington of a baby-sitter and the infant she was watching said the "extremely heavy" woman may have slumped over on the couch and suffocated the month-old boy.

The infant and the baby-sitter were discovered Thursday night when the child's father, a local television newsman, returned home and lifted up the unconscious baby-sitter to find his lifeless son underneath, said Det. Lt. Gerard V. Pelkofsky, commanding officer of the Suffolk police homicide squad.

Police identified the infant as Michael Baldwin III and the baby-sitter as Teresa Coffey, 39, of Port Jefferson Station.

"I didn't see him because she was a big woman. My son was underneath her -- dead," the boy's father, Michael Baldwin Jr., said Friday.

"I just held him in my hands. And I said, 'Wake up, Michael! Wake up!' But he didn't."

Police do not know why the woman collapsed, Pelkofsky said, and detectives were awaiting the results of autopsies and toxicology tests.

Pelkofsky said police are trying to figure out whether Coffey asphyxiated the boy when she fell on him or whether there was another cause.

"The woman was described as extremely heavy," Pelkofsky said.

"When she passed out, or whatever caused her to fall over, she did fall over or slide over on top of the baby," he said.

No one answered the door at Coffey's home on Friday, and a woman who answered Coffey's phone declined to comment.

Police were first called to Baldwin's home on Lafayette Street about 9:30 p.m. Thursday after the father returned, couldn't find his son and searched everywhere -- the boy's bedroom, the bassinet -- before finding the boy under the baby-sitter in the living room, police said.

Baldwin, a freelancer for the cable network News 12 Long Island, had been at work earlier Thursday to interview Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy for Baldwin's program "Diverse Long Island." The network is owned by Cablevision, which also owns Newsday.

Baldwin said his wife wasn't at home, and he struggled to find a baby-sitter. Eventually, he said, he decided to let Coffey, a friend of his wife's, watch the boy for the first time.

About 6:30 p.m., he received a message from her in which he could hear his son crying, Baldwin said.

He said he tried to return the call dozens of times but she didn't pick up the phone.

"This kid has been my life," Baldwin said, "and now my boy is gone."

With William Murphy, Andrew Smith

and John Valenti