A pregnant Mexican woman died after she was cut open by two assailants who stole her unborn baby, authorities said Monday.
Rosa Isela Castro Vazquez, 20, was eight-months pregnant when she was kidnapped by two suspects who cut the baby out of her womb and dumped her body in Medellin del Bravo, in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
Police arrested the alleged perpetrators after discovering a newborn baby in their possession, the attorney general’s office in the eastern state of Veracruz said in a statement.
They allegedly sliced open the victim to extract the fetus because the woman attacker was unable to have children herself, an official linked to the investigation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The suspects, a man and a woman, appeared before a judge on Monday accused of kidnapping and femicide.
The victim was lured to her death through social media with a promise of clothes for her baby, relatives told local media, which said that it was the third case of its kind in recent years.
Rosa Isela had gone to meet a woman who had reportedly contacted her on social media to offer her baby clothes, according to her sister, whose name was not made public.
Footage of the meeting between Rosa Isela and the mysterious woman she met near the airport reportedly shows the woman arriving late and looking around nervously while talking to the victim.
Rosa Isela is then said to have got into a vehicle, never to be seen alive again. Two suspects were detained after the authorities launched an investigation.
Newsflash obtained a statement from the Attorney General of the State of Veracruz on Sunday, 4th December, saying: ‘The State Attorney General’s Office, headed by Veronica Hernandez Giadans, reports that officials of the Ministerial Police arrested Gonzalo “N” and Veronica ‘N’ as alleged perpetrators of the crime of disappearance committed by individuals.’
‘N’ is often used in Mexico to obfuscate a suspect’s full name due to local privacy laws.
The authorities have also reportedly recovered the baby, a girl, alive and well.
The investigation is being headed up by the Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Investigation of Crimes of Violence against the Family, Women, Children and Human Trafficking.
At the time of writing, the two suspects were expected to be brought before a judge to give an initial statement.
A woman in Texas in September murdered her pregnant friend and cut the fetus from the victim’s womb to try and pass it off as her own. Taylor Parker, 29, received the death sentence for the crime.
More than 3,700 women were murdered in violence-plagued Mexico in 2021, of which around 1,000 were classified as femicides, according to official figures. (DailyMail)
