Pregnant Teen Found Slain with Baby Ripped Out, Allegedly Lured by Woman in Facebook Mom Group

The body of a missing mom who was nine months pregnant was found strangled to death Wednesday in a Chicago home, and her baby was cut out of her womb after she was killed, PEOPLE confirms.

Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, who also went by the last name Ochoa-Uriostegui, had been missing since April 23, police say.

On that day, authorities responded to a 911 call from a 46-year-old woman saying that her baby was not breathing. That baby boy, a Chicago police spokeswoman tells PEOPLE, was actually Ochoa-Lopez’s.

Three people are in custody and charges are pending, the spokeswoman says.

Fox 32 reports that family members say the baby, named Yavani Yadiel Lopez, is on life support at the hospital and has no brain function, while the police spokeswoman describes the baby’s condition as “grave.”

Ochoa Lopez’s body was found on the block from which the 911 call came, says the spokeswoman, who would not comment on the circumstances that led to the discovery of the body.

The spokeswoman did not comment on whether the 46-year-old woman who called 911 is currently in custody.

The Chicago Tribune previously reported that Ochoa-Lopez was last seen leaving Latino Youth Alternative High School. She is married and has a 3-year-old son she was supposed to pick up from day care on the day she disappeared.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office confirms to PEOPLE that Ochoa-Lopez’s death was a homicide, and that the cause of death was ligature strangulation.

At a Wednesday press conference, Cecilia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the family, told reporters Ochoa-Lopez was possibly lured to the home by a woman she met on a Facebook group for young mothers who told her she was giving away clothes, The Washington Post reports.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes. That’s the false pretenses that we believe led [Ochoa-Lopez] to that house,” Garcia said.

Reps for Facebook did not immediately comment to PEOPLE.

Ochoa-Lopez’s husband, Giovanni Lopez, spoke to reporters in Spanish through tears, Fox 32 reports.

“I have a lot of pain, a lot of anguish, a lot of sadness. I can’t anymore. It’s painful to lose your wife, the woman you love the most. It’s painful,” Lopez said.

After Ochoa-Lopez went missing and the due date for her baby passed, her mother said at a press conference pleading for information that her young son was not eating and kept asking after her, and that the family had to take down photos of her.

Source: Read Full Article