A baby cut from the womb after his mother had been strangled to death has suffered brain damage is not expected to survive.
The baby has been named by his father as Yadiel Yiovanni Lopez.
Police are investigating the murder of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, after her body was found in a garbage can in the southwest side of Chicago. She had been missing for three weeks. Ochoa-Lopez, who was nine months pregnant, is believed to have been lured to a woman’s home via Facebook with the promise of free baby clothes, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
BREAKING: Remains of a missing pregnant teen have been found at a Chicago home… https://t.co/darEGeyp2s pic.twitter.com/WJ0NaIs9np
— ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) May 15, 2019
A source told the newspaper that the baby was on a life support machine in “grave condition” after suffering brain damage.
Hours after Ochoa-Lopez was last seen on April 23, a woman called 911 and said her baby was having breathing problems. The woman was in a Facebook group with Ochoa-Lopez. “The caller gave birth 10 minutes ago,” a 911 dispatcher told the Chicago Fire Department. “Forty-six years of age. The baby isn’t breathing. The baby is pale and blue. They are doing CPR.”
A neighbor said she saw police take the woman into custody on Tuesday along with her daughter and both of their boyfriends. Each was put into a separate police vehicle. Charges against at least three are expected to be filed Thursday.
Police conducted a DNA test from the baby and discovered he was not related to Ochoa-Lopez and not the woman claiming to be the mother.
Surrounded by family members and supporters, the father of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez nearly collapsed this morning as he walked into the Cook County medical examiner’s office to identify his daughter’s body.https://t.co/eqv5sZ3KJc pic.twitter.com/q3tPTKPigO
— Ashlee Rezin (@Ashlee_Rezin) May 16, 2019
The mother of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez outside the Medical Examiner’s office… Her friends spoke with us – stunned, heartbroken, trying to make sense of an incomprehensible crime. pic.twitter.com/WjaYf8tc3x
— Lexi Sutter (@LexiSutterTV) May 16, 2019
“I have a lot of pain, a lot of anguish, a lot of sadness,” Ochoa-Lopez’s husband told reporters in Spanish outside the Cook County medical examiner’s office. “It’s painful to lose your wife, the woman you love the most. It’s painful.”
The case is similar to one from neighboring DuPage County in 1995. Debra Evans and her two children were killed in their apartment, with her nearly full-term son was cut out from her womb. The baby survived the incident. Levern Ward, who fathered the children, is serving a life sentence for murder, as are Fedell Caffey and Jacqueline Williams, the latter of whom is a cousin of Ward and, according to prosecutors, wanted the child.
