Police Have New Tool to Find Mom of Baby Left in Dumpster

On Christmas Eve, a newborn girl was found dead in a dumpster in a Calgary parking lot. Police are still looking for her mother, and now they have a sketch of the woman or girl, thanks to a process known as DNA phenotyping, the CBC reports. The Canadian authorities hired a US technology firm to create the sketch after their initial leads from tips ran out. Using "biological material found at the scene," per Global News, the Virginia-based company was able to figure out some of the mother's likely physical traits. Police have now released sketches of what she might look like at the ages of 18 and 25; her age is not known. See the sketches here, as well as a sketch of the baby.

Police believe the mother is probably of mixed race, possibly with Métis or Indigenous ancestry, and that she has brown or black hair, hazel or green eyes, and a fair complexion. She is not being sought as a suspect—police say evidence at the scene leads police to think she was in medical distress at the time, and they are concerned about her welfare—but police say they have "very difficult and challenging questions" for her, Metro News reports. Police believe the baby was born alive, but it's not clear whether she was dead when she was put in the dumpster; it's also not clear who put her there. (This terrible sketch actually helped cops ID a suspect.)