LONGMONT, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado woman accused of cutting open the belly of a pregnant woman and removing her unborn baby went to great lengths to show her family she was expecting a baby herself, even arranging to meet her husband for a pre-natal appointment on the day of the attack, authorities said.
But when Dynel Lane’s husband came home to get her, he found her covered in blood and a baby gasping for breath in a bathtub.
Lane told her husband she suffered a miscarriage, and he took her and the baby to a hospital, where she was later arrested on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder and other crimes. Police wrote in her arrest affidavit that she lured the pregnant stranger to her home with a Craigslist ad for baby clothes and then cut her open.
The gruesome case shocked Colorado and revived a highly charged debate in that state over when a fetus can legally be considered a human being.
District Attorney Stan Garnett said he will wait for the results of an autopsy on the baby, planned for Friday, to determine when and how the baby died and what charges to file.
“I’ve never quite seen this fact pattern before,” he said.
While drifting in and out of consciousness, the 26-year-old woman, who was nearly 8 months pregnant with a baby girl, told police she did not know Lane and only went to her house in response to the ad, affidavit states.
A doctor told investigators the incision in the mother’s belly was well performed and would have required some research on Cesarean births.
The woman later managed to call 911 and police arrived to help her sometime after Lane and her husband left.
In a recording of the call, a woman with a dazed-sounding voice says she has been stabbed and pleads for help.
“She cut me,” the woman says, later adding, “I’m pregnant.”
“Please help me,” she says. “Help, help.”
Police said the woman was alert and answering questions on Thursday, and her family released a statement to the Longmont Times-Call newspaper thanking first responders.
