Born in a motel room, murdered, then thrown in a dumpster.

This was the fate of the child of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson Jr. Remember these names. Look for them in the news — for these star-crossed lovers have spun a tangled web of Elizabethan proportions.

Brian and Amy are the true modern-day Romeo and Juliet. In fair Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, where we lay our scene:

Brian and Amy met at Ramapo Regional High School in Franklin Lakes, an affluent suburb 20 miles northwest of New York City with million dollar homes and golf courses.

Amy’s father owns a large furniture business and her mother is an interior designer. Brian’s mother and stepfather run a successful video-rental company.

Their relationship was not one which hid between the hate of their families, but rather the image their families projected. Brian and Amy had the picture-perfect relationship and were very popular at their high school, where they were involved in many school functions.

Two households, both alike in dignity.

Near the end of their senior year Brian got Amy pregnant. Both went off to different colleges.The pregnancy was a threat to their images and, most of all, Amy did not want her mother to find out.

Amy went off to the University of Delaware in Wilmington, keeping her pregnancy concealed to those from her hometown and her family despite being just over five feet tall and petite. At 12:45 a.m. on Nov. 12, Amy’s water broke. She called Brian, who went to school in Gettysburg, Pa. He picked her up three hours later and they checked into the Comfort Inn.

The events, the actions, the exchange of words on that night between those two young souls must have been something amazingly unbelievable. She gave birth an hour after they arrived. Imagine planning to kill after giving birth.

There’s a plot that’s stranger than fiction. I’m sure we’ll see the TV movie sometime after the trial, because the Delaware Attorney general said she wants to give them the death penalty if they are convicted.

Yessirreebob, everybody dies.

Police say Amy gave birth to a healthy baby boy — 20 inches long; 6 pounds, 2 ounces. After Brian put the child in a plastic bag and left him in the hotel’s dumpster, they checked out around 5 a.m. and went to her dorm room to sleep.

Around 5 p.m. Amy began to complain of stomach pains and bleeding. She went to the hospital and doctors discovered that her baby’s placenta had not passed through her uterus during delivery, causing complications. She broke down and told the doctors about the motel birth and Brian’s part in disposing of the baby.

Brian also began to snap that same day and told his student-residence counselor of the birth and that they had “gotten rid of” the child.

Here is a case of two people who fell prey to the natural hormonal urges working within their bodies. That’s how babies are made, but that’s the problem for these two, because having a baby at 18 creates a dirty image which might end their worry-free plush lifestyle.

These two committed an act that even they could not imagine themselves doing, so it didn’t take long for them to break down and admit wrongdoing. Would you sentence these two to the death penalty? After all, they are adults.

The baby’s autopsy revealed he died of “multiple skull fractures, with injury to the brain, blunt-force head trauma and shaking,” according to the official report.

Now would you sentence these two to the death penalty?

This is not your average baby-in-the-garbage case in which someone felt she had no recourse of action for an unwanted pregnancy. These kids had money. They had access to the best abortion clinics, adoption agencies, or counseling services.

At the point where I find myself angrily saying “let them fry together,” I remind myself that they didn’t do it just to keep their privileged lives, but also to not disappoint their parents and the people who made their comfortable lives possible.

At 18, when you first get out of the house, you want to prove to the world that you can become somebody. You want to party, granted, but you want to prove to your parents who believe in you so much that you have what it takes to make it.

And in that spirit, image is everything. They killed that baby for an image.

On the other hand, would someone who was not from an affluent background receive the death penalty for the same offense?

I should hope the same law applies for the rich as well as the poor. In Delaware, if an adult murders someone under the age of 14, the state can seek the death penalty.

Right now I want to write, “Give them the lethal injection,” but I wouldn’t send them to die. I have a feeling that these two didn’t know what they were really getting into, and they will not commit this act again. I believe it was not premeditated, and therefore should be 2nd degree murder, instead. I think they just didn’t know what to do when the baby came.

God, did they mess up, but I wouldn’t send an 18-year old to die. Romeo and Juliet died because they couldn’t escape their families’ images. Brian and Amy tried to uphold their families’ images, but they should not lose their lives for it.

They have definitely lost their images, their youth and each other — for eternity.

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Tim Frerking is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Pomeroy.