Texas woman kills pregnant friend, cuts fetus from womb and calls baby her own, police say
A Texas woman is accused of killing her pregnant friend and removing the victim’s unborn baby from her womb in a violent attack that also resulted in the child’s death over the weekend.
The suspect, 27-year-old Taylor Parker, was arrested in the neighboring state of Oklahoma after trying to pass the baby as her own just hours after the crime, authorities said.
The suspected killer went to a hospital in the city of Idabel and told staff she had just given birth on the side of the road, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said in a news release Tuesday.
An investigation revealed that she had also told a state trooper during a traffic stop that she had just had the baby and the child wasn’t breathing, prompting the officer to call an ambulance for her, according to the release.
The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The circumstances involving her friend’s murder remain under investigation, but police said she killed 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock at a home in New Boston, Texas, on Friday morning. A doctor determined that the victim, who was eight-months pregnant, had not given birth before her death, police told local news outlets.
The women’s exact relationship is also unclear, but Simmons-Hancock’s family said she considered the suspect a friend, according to an online fundraising campaign.
Parker has been charged with two counts of murder and one count of kidnapping. She’s being held in an Oklahoma jail pending her extradition back to Texas.
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