A pregnant teenager lured to a Chicago home with the promise of free baby clothes was strangled and her baby was cut from her womb.
The newborn baby boy is in a serious condition and is not expected to survive. Meanwhile, police have charged 46-year-old Clarisa Figueroa and her daughter Desiree Figueroa, 24, with first-degree murder.
The older woman’s boyfriend, 40-year-old Piotr Bobak, is charged with concealment of a homicide.
The body of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez was found early on Wednesday, more than three weeks after she disappeared.
The teenager, who was nine months pregnant, was last seen leaving her high school on April 23, the same day paramedics were called to the home several miles away on the Southwest Side about a newborn with problems breathing.
“We believe that she was murdered, and we believe that the baby was forcibly removed following that murder,” a police spokesman said, calling it an “unspeakable act of violence”.
Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said a 46-year-old woman called 911 reporting that her newborn baby was in distress.
When paramedics arrived “the baby wasn’t breathing, the baby was blue,” said Merritt. Paramedics tried to resuscitate the baby on the way to the hospital.
The family of Ochoa-Lopez, a married mother of a three-year-old son, said a woman on Facebook had lured her to the home by offering a stroller and baby clothes.
“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretence that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes,” said Cecelia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the family.
Ochoa-Lopez’s family had been looking for her since her disappearance, organising search parties, holding news conferences and pushing police for updates on the investigation.
Police were able to connect her disappearance with the 911 call when Ochoa-Lopez’s family shared her social media account details with them, which showed she had communicated with Figueroa in a Facebook group for expectant mothers.
A break in the investigation came after Figueroa set up an online fundraising campaign, for what she said was her dying baby, another spokeswoman for Ochoa-Lopez’s family said.
The GoFundMe campaign said that the baby was about to die and money was needed for a funeral.
Police then conducted DNA tests to determine that Ochoa-Lopez and her husband, Yiovanni Lopez, were actually his parents.
A search of the neighbourhood found Ochoa-Lopez’s car parked a few streets away. On Tuesday cleaning supplies as well as evidence of blood in the hallway and the bathroom of the home were found. Ochoa-Lopez’s body was later found in a rubbish bin behind the house.
The baby’s father has been visiting his son at the hospital, and while the family is bracing for his death, they are still praying for a miracle.
“Why did these people, why did these bad people, do this? She did nothing to them,” Lopez told reporters in Spanish on Wednesday night. “She was a good person.”
He added: “We plead to God that he gives us our child because that is a blessing that my wife left for us.
The three suspects are scheduled to appear in court on Friday.