A Mexican woman eight months pregnant died after a couple cut her open to rip out her unborn baby – who officials say was miraculously saved alive.
Rosa Isela Castro Vazquez, 20, was last seen last Wednesday after heading out to meet a woman she had chatted with online who had promised to give her used baby clothes, local authorities said .
After Vazquez disappeared, her husband alerted police to the online chats showing that she had planned to meet the woman at a pharmacy near her home in the eastern state of Veracruz, local reports said.
Surveillance footage showed the mother-to-be meeting the suspect outside the pharmacy and being bundled into a car, the reports said.
The pregnant woman’s body was eventually found in a ranch raid on Saturday, with the unborn child cut out, prosecutors confirmed.
On the same day, a woman identified only as Veronica “N” aroused suspicions when she took a newborn baby to Veracruz Regional Hospital and could not prove it was hers, local reports said.
Rosa Isela Castro Vázquez, 20, was killed when her unborn baby was cut out of her. JamPress
Officials confirmed that when Veronica “N” and her partner Gonzalo “N” were arrested, “they were with an underage newborn who was rescued safe and sound.”
The couple appeared before a judge on Monday charged with kidnapping and murder of a woman.
They allegedly cut open the victim to get to her fetus because the attacker was unable to have children herself, an official linked to the investigation told Agence France-Presse.
Suspect Veronica “N” was reportedly unable to have children of her own. JamPress
Gonzalo “N” was also arrested and charged with kidnapping and femicide. JamPress
More than 3,700 women were murdered in violence-ridden Mexico in 2021, of which around 1,000 were classified as femicides, according to official figures.
Similar shocking crimes have also been committed in the US, albeit rarely. Last month, Taylor Rene Parker, 21, was sentenced to death in Texas for the October 2020 killing of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock, 21, and her young daughter in New Boston.