A 17-year-old Arnold girl who gave birth on a toilet and dumped the baby in a trash can refused a friend's pleas to call 911 or to accept a ride to the hospital, part of a pattern of "long-term avoidance" of dealing with her pregnancy, a prosecutor said yesterday.

But Megan Patria's lawyer said what happened Dec. 3, 2005, was the result of a teenage plan gone awry and Patria, panicked and in shock, thought her newborn son was dead.

Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Nancy Davis-Loomis, who ruled earlier that Patria should be tried as a juvenile on charges of second-degree murder, child abuse resulting in death and manslaughter, said she will rule on the case "soon."

If found delinquent - the juvenile court equivalent of guilty - Patria, now 18, could be held in a juvenile facility or remain on probation until she turns 21. She is on pretrial release, receiving counseling.

Patria sat silently in the courtroom during the proceeding, occasionally shaking her head as the prosecutor spoke. During a recess for her to see photographs in evidence of the baby, who was to be named Jordan, she cried, collapsing into her mother's arms.

A medical examiner has ruled that the baby either drowned in the toilet where the former Broadneck High School student kept him for five to 10 minutes, or smothered in the plastic bag he shared with garbage in a trash can outside Patria's home. The cold might have also contributed to the death, the official said.

Defense lawyer Howard L. Cardin described a girl who hid her pregnancy and saw her nebulous plan to deliver the baby with help from a second friend, then place him for adoption, fail. She went into labor at home - while her mother was there - and could not find the friend.

Terrified, and with her mother then gone out to dinner, she delivered the baby and "sat on that toilet for about 10 minutes because she didn't know what to do," Cardin said. He said she was "in shock" and "incapable of seeking medical help."

"There was no movement by the baby, no crying, absolutely no motion, and she believed the baby was dead," Cardin said.

She wanted to keep the baby in bed with her, but when her mother and her mother's friend came home, she "did what she thought was the next best thing," he said. She put the baby in a plastic bag and into the trash can.

But Deputy State's Attorney Laura S. Kiessling said Patria had long intended to rid herself of the infant. She smoke and drank, did not seek prenatal care, and searched online for how to cause a miscarriage.

She kept the pregnancy so secret that a month before delivering, she led her mother to complain to school administrators about false pregnancy rumors, the prosecutor said.

After telling a friend Dec. 3 that her water broke, she refused her first friend's plea to call 911 because "my mom is still home. She can't find out," Kiessling said.

After she gave birth, Kiessling said, Patria had her wits about her enough to look for scissors and cut the umbilical cord in her bedroom.

"There was no reason, medical or physical, that she could not have picked that baby up out of the toilet," the prosecutor said.

The next day, she showed off her slimmed figure, watched a movie at home with a friend and went out to dinner with family and friends, Kiessling said. A friend later told authorities that Patria "had not looked that happy in a long time," she said.

A friend revealed the story, and that night, police were at Patria's home.

andrea.siegel@baltsun.com