Sipa USA
The woman accused of strangling a young pregnant woman to tear her baby from her womb almost five years ago in Chicago was sentenced this Tuesday to spend fifty years in prison after accepting her guilt.
Clarisa Figueroa, 51, faced more than a dozen charges, including first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault against a minor and dismemberment of a body, for the murder of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa López, the April 23, 2019.
With the help of his daughter Desiree, then 24 years old, Figueroa strangled the young woman, nine months pregnant, with a cable, and then opened her abdomen from side to side and removed the baby from the uterus, according to the indictment. Prosecutor's Office.
Figueroa then called the emergency room to say that she had given birth but that the child was not breathing.
When questioned, the woman denied that Ochoa López had arrived at her house and assured that the child was hers.
Yovanny Jadiel López, the baby torn from his mother's womb, died on June 14 after spending seven weeks hospitalized on an artificial respirator due to the brain damage he suffered in the attack. The medical examiner certified his death as a homicide.
Sitting in a wheelchair, Figueroa accepted responsibility for the murder on Tuesday and was sentenced to fifty years in prison without the right to parole.
Judge Peggy Chiampas told the sentenced woman that she expected her to think “every day” about the family of her victims and the harm she had done to them, according to the Chicago Tribune newspaper.
Her mother and daughter lured the victim to a house in the southwest of the city with the promise of donating clothes and a baby stroller, among other items, and once inside they attacked her.
The young woman's body was thrown into a garbage container where she was found almost three weeks later.
Figueroa's daughter pleaded guilty last January and agreed to testify against her mother in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence.
Piotr Bobak, Figueroa's boyfriend, who prosecutors say cleaned up the crime scene, pleaded guilty last year to one count of obstruction of justice and was sentenced to four years in prison.
