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Police on Monday are in their fifth day picking through a massive landfill in search of the body of a 7-month-old boy who prosecutors say was drowned in a Bloomington hotel bathtub by his mother and thrown away in a dumpster.

Bloomington Deputy Police Chief Kim Clauson said Monday that detectives have been at the Pine Bend landfill in southeastern Inver Grove Heights since Thursday looking for baby Mateo Harding.

Pine Bend is the state's largest open landfill, with a capacity of 33.9 million cubic yards. An expansion in the works would boost that number to 42.1 million cubic yards. Its waste comes from the metro area, greater Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Clauson said "we do not have a definitive time frame" for how long police are willing to search in order to find the baby boy's body.

"Sorting by hand [by] volunteers from our Fire Department, detectives, [and] employees of the landfill" has been assisted by the deployment of dogs and heavy equipment to the mountain of trash, the deputy chief said.

Charges filed Friday against his mother, Esperanza R. Harding, and her boyfriend, 18-year-old Edwin Trudeau, allege that she drowned the boy on Feb. 28 in a room at the Quality Inn in the 800 block of E. American Boulevard.

Harding, 20, put her son's body in a backpack and disposed it in a dumpster outside the hotel, according to the charges. The dumpster's contents were then hauled to the privately operated landfill.

Harding, who has no permanent address, is charged with second-degree murder. Trudeau, of Minnetonka, is charged with aiding Harding after the boy died. Both remain jailed ahead of separate court appearances on April 3.

She told Bloomington police that Trudeau did not like her son and wanted her to put him up for adoption as a way to "prove that he was her top priority," the charges read. Harding went on to explain that she was mad that the boy was crying and making it difficult for her to enjoy her bath.

"Our baby boy, Mateo Harding, was only 7 months old when a person's wrongful choices took him away from us," a family posted on an online fundraising campaign that is raising money for the boy's funeral. "He was a happy, sweet and loving baby boy."