BRIDGEWATER — Amanda Oickle says she implored Andrew Cunningham to call an ambulance, but he refused, smoking in the doorway as she squatted on the bathroom floor in 2009 and delivered their baby.

Oickle testified in Liverpool provincial court last year that she reached over to the bathroom sink, grabbed a pair of scissors she believes Cunningham used for his dope and cut the umbilical cord.

The baby wasn’t crying. She left him on the floor, went out into the living room, sat on the chesterfield and watched television as Cunningham cleaned up the bathroom.

The infant was dead at birth, she said. "He wasn’t crying or breathing or nothing."

Oickle testified at Cunningham’s preliminary inquiry last December that she saw Cunningham put the baby into a box and then put the box in a derelict oven in the hallway outside their apartment.

The body stayed in the oven for five days until family members found out about the birth and persuaded Oickle to take the baby to nearby Queens General Hospital.

"The community will be both shocked and saddened by what has happened," Judge Jim Burrill said during Oickle’s sentencing last November.

The details were not reported until now because Cunningham was scheduled to stand trial last week on charges of concealing the newborn’s body. However, the charge was dropped after prosecutor Josh Bryson said he did not have enough evidence to secure a conviction, which means evidence presented at the preliminary hearing can now be reported.

Burrill said at Oickle’s sentencing that she was aware she was pregnant and tried to hide it from her family and co-workers. The judge said she started to experience labour pains at about 5 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2009.

Oickle wanted to call for help but said Cunningham would not allow her to freely use the land line and she had no minutes left on her cellphone.

As the pain got worse, "she beseeched" Cunningham to call 911, but he refused, the judge said.

Burrill said Oickle went into the bathroom and delivered the baby on the floor and then went out to the living and sat on the couch as Cunningham cleaned up the bathroom. They watched TV together after he took a box out into the hallway and then they went to bed.