A man was convicted yesterday of two counts of first degree murder in the death of his pregnant girlfriend and her unborn baby, after she refused to have an abortion, the Associated Press reported.
Stephen Poaches, 27, was found guilty in a nonjury trial of the strangling death of 24-year-old LaToyia Figueroa and her five-month unborn child.
Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said Poaches wanted Figueroa to have an abortion, but she refused.
“He did not want this child to be born,” Vega said. In his closing argument for the prosecution, Vega said Poaches had planned the killing over a period of time.
In a statement to police, Poaches said he attacked Figueroa just hours after accompanying her to a medical checkup.
The mother of a seven-year-old girl, Figueroa disappeared in July 2005, in a case that received national attention after a blogger accused the national media of ignoring her disappearance because she was black and Hispanic. Her body was found a month after her death when a police detective followed Poaches to the vacant lot where he had left her body.
(This article courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
