Chicago Police officials identified a suspect in the slaying of a teen who also had her infant son forcibly removed from her womb.
“Chicago Police announce three people charged in death of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, including Clarissa Figueroa and her daughter Desiree, who police said killed Marlen, and a third who they said concealed murder,” said aFox32 reporter on May 16. Police officials revealed her identity in a press conference.
NOW: Chicago Police announce three people charged in death of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, including Clarissa Figueroa and her daughter Desiree, who police said killed Marlen, and a third who they said concealed murder.
Case cracked by a tip from Marlen’s friend, they said. @fox32news
— Dakarai Turner (@Dakarai_Turner) May 16, 2019
The family stated that they are praying for the child.
“I have a lot of faith that the baby’s going to live. God is going to give me that miracle. We’re anxiously waiting to have him, to love him,” Yiovanni Lopez, 20, the husband of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
Three people have been arrested and charged, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a press conference Thursday, reported CNN.
People magazine also reported that the baby removed from the womb has no brain function. Fox32 reported that the family doesn’t have plans to remove the child from life support.
His young wife killed, their baby cut from her womb, a husband asks, “Why did these bad people do this?” https://t.co/Y9e5SVxfBG pic.twitter.com/GeCRoaNYNw
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) May 16, 2019
Ochoa-Lopez, 19, went missing for three weeks before her body was found May 15. She left behind a 3-year-old son, Joshua, who has reportedly been asking for his mother.
“We believe that she was murdered and we believe that the baby was forcibly removed following that murder,” said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, Fox32 reported. The baby, he said, is in “grave” condition.
“My other son feels sad,” Lopez told the paper. “I can’t explain what happened because he’s still a kid, but I try to make him happy.”
Surrounded by family members and supporters, the father of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez nearly collapsed this morning as he walked into the Cook County medical examiner’s office to identify his daughter’s body.https://t.co/eqv5sZ3KJc pic.twitter.com/q3tPTKPigO
— Ashlee Rezin (@Ashlee_Rezin) May 16, 2019
”There were plenty of clues and in my view this all took way too long. They kept saying how a judge had to OK every request—to check her phone, to check Facebook,” he said. “I hired a private investigator and he found all of that information, where my daughter was murdered, and he shared that information with police,” he added.
Arnulfo Ochoa, Ochoa-Lopez’s father, meanwhile, said he is displeased with the Chicago Police Department’s response.
Reports said that Ochoa-Lopez was seen last on April 23. She had been communicating with a woman she had met in a Facebook group for mothers.
”We just want them to face justice,” Arnulfo Ochoa said on May 16. “We are not against them but we just want them to understand what they did wrong.”
Chicago Police tell me 4 people are being questioned, 3 of them are under arrest. A press conference will happen today and charges will be announced in the death of #MarlenOchoa. She was 9 months pregnant when she disappeared, sources say the baby was cut from her womb.@fox32news pic.twitter.com/XAJUFeFmLy
— Tia A. Ewing (@TIA_EWING) May 16, 2019
Cecilia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the family, said that Ochoa-Lopez was possibly lured on Facebook by a woman who told her she was giving away clothes, The Washington Post reported.
“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes,” Garcia told the Post. “That’s the false pretenses that we believe led [Ochoa-Lopez] to that house.”
