A young couple from Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of abandoning the body of the woman's 1-year-old child, prefectural police said.
The arrest of Mika Tamiya, 21, and her husband Motoki, 21, comes just a day after police identified the boy as Yu Minematsu, whose body was found in April in the gutter of a road in Nose, Osaka Prefecture, police said. Mika, who had the child in a previous marriage, was identified as the mother via DNA analysis.
Police said the couple surfaced as suspects after a child care center in Osaka told them it had gotten a call in January from a woman with the same name as the arrested mother.
"I can't raise (my boy) anymore. Isn't there anything like a baby hatch?" the center quoted her as saying.