Pregnant US teen killed, baby cut from womb

A pregnant teenager who had gone to a house in Chicago in response to a Facebook offer of free baby clothes was strangled and her baby cut from her womb, US police and family members say.

The newborn is in grave condition and not expected to survive.

Marlen Ochoa-Uriostegui, whose body was found at a house in Chicago after she was strangled and her baby was cut from her womb.Credit:Chicago Police/Chicago Tribune via AP

Three people were arrested, with charges including murder later filed, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

The body of Marlen Ochoa-Uriostegui, 19, was found behind the house on the Southwest Side early on Wednesday.

Police watch over a house in Chicago where Marlen Ochoa-Uriostegui’s body was found. Insets from top: Clarisa Figueroa, her daughter Desiree Figueroa and her boyfriend Piotr Bobak, who have all been charged.Credit:Chicago Tribune, Chicago Police Department via AP

The woman, who was nine months pregnant, was last seen leaving her high school on April 23, the same day paramedics were called to the house several kilometres away about a newborn with problems breathing.

"We believe that she was murdered, and we believe that the baby was forcibly removed following that murder," Guglielmi said, calling it an "unspeakable act of violence".

According to WLS-TV, a 911 dispatcher reported that a 46-year-old woman had called to say that she had given birth 10 minutes earlier and the baby was pale and blue and not breathing.

Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree, 24, were both charged with first-degree murder.

Clarisa Figueroa's boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, 40, was charged with concealment of a homicide.

Police said the younger Figueroa confessed to assisting her mother in strangling Ochoa-Uriostegui.

The family of Ochoa-Uriostegui, 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 pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes," Cecelia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the family, said.

Ochoa-Uriostegui's family had been looking for her since her disappearance, organising search parties, holding news conferences and pushing police for updates on the investigation.

Her husband, Yiovanni Lopez, visited his son at the hospital and named him Yadiel, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

"Why did these people, why did these bad people, do this? She did nothing to them," Lopez told WLS. "She was a good person."

AP

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