Society’s most vulnerable are often the easiest targets.
Young women of color face adversity and threats of violence everyday, and it is truly disturbing and heartbreaking when help arrives too late.
On Wednesday, a 19-year-old girl was found strangled to death in a Chicago home.
Marlen Ochoa-Lopez was nine months pregnant.
After she was killed, her baby was cut out of her womb.
Lopez was last seen leaving Latino Youth Alternative High School.
She was married and also had a three-year-old son, who she was supposed to pick up from daycare on the day she disappeared.
She had been reported missing since April 23rd.
Two other young pregnant women were reported missing from Chicago’s south side within two months, one of them a woman of color.
A 911 call was made from a 46-year-old woman claiming that her baby was not breathing.
According to Chicago Police, that baby was actually Lopez’s.
Three suspects are currently in custody, though it was initially unclear if the 46-year-old woman who made the call is one of them.
Lopez’s body was found on the block from which the 911 call was made.
It has since been announced that the woman who made the 911 call has been charged.
The woman, Clarisa Figueroa, has been charged with murder, along with her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, and her boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, who was charged with concealing a homicidal death.
Figueroa had been claiming to have had “post-delivery” issues.
Figueroa’s 911 call and the subsequent hospitalization of the baby was not immediately connected to Lopez’s case, a police source told The Chicago Sun-Times .
“Words really cannot express how disgusting and thoroughly disturbing these allegations are.”
CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson spoke at a news conference , “And I’d like to offer my sincere condolences and prayers to Marlen’s family, who instead of celebrating the arrival of a new life into their family are now mourning Marlen’s loss.”
The baby is currently on life support with zero brain function.
The child, named Yavani Yadiel Lopez, will remain in hospital until his condition improves.
One police spokeswoman described the baby’s condition as ‘grave’.
Medical examiners have confirmed that the death was indeed a homicide.
The cause of death is ligature strangulation, which is the most common cause of death for cases of serial murder.
The baby’s father remains hopeful.
“I have a lot of faith that the baby’s going to live. God is going to give me that miracle. We’re anxiously waiting to have him, to love him,” Lopez said outside the medical examiner’s office.
Lopez was possibly lured to the home by a woman she met through a young mothers Facebook group.
“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes,” explained spokesperson Cecila Garcia, “That’s the false pretenses that we believe led [Lopez] to that house.”
The Facebook messages between the two women were how the police connected Figueroa to the case.
When investigators went to Figueroa’s house, they spoke with her daughter who initially claimed her mother had gone to the hospital with leg pains, before giving “an extremely odd story” that her mother had just given birth, according to Deputy Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan.
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Her husband is devastated.
Giovanni Lopez stated to reporters that he’s currently experiencing a lot of pain and anguish:
“I can’t anymore. It’s painful to lose your wife.”
“…the woman you love the most. It’s painful.”
The family is mourning, anxiously holding their breath while they wait for further updates on Lopez’s case.
h/t: People
