Ohio Teenagers Found Guilty of Attacking Pregnant Girl, Killing Unborn Baby 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 15, 2008
Cincinnati, OH (LifeNews.com) — Two Ohio teenagers have been found guilty of attacking a pregnant woman and killing her unborn child. The teens allegedly attacked Kerria Anderson because she refused to have an abortion of her baby, whom one of the boys thought he fathered.
Alfonso Price, now 16, and his friend Jebrell Wright, reportedly kicked Anderson, who was eight months pregnant, in the stomach and hit her causing her to miscarry the unborn child.
She planned to name her baby Precious, but the baby was born stillborn after the attack.
A Hamilton County Common Pleas Court found the teens guilty on Tuesday morning of killing the baby and assaulting Anderson. They were also convicted on kidnapping charges.
The pair will be sentenced on May 6 and were convicted in part on an Ohio unborn victims law pro-life groups helped put in place that offers protection and justice for pregnant women and their unborn children who are victims of violent attacks.
As LifeNews.com reported last week, new DNA tests confirmed Price was not the father of the unborn child.
During the trial, Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Rick Gibson explained what happened and discussed the results of the DNA testing during his opening statements in the murder trial.
Gibson explained that Anderson was beaten on two occasions but suffered the most during the second attack, where Price and a friend allegedly kicked and hit her stomach and caused her baby’s death.
“B—- you should have got an abortion, now your baby is going to die,” Anderson said Alfonso told her during the attack.
Anderson was eventually able to contact authorities, but the baby girl wasn’t able to be saved. Her skull had been fractured in the attack.
"There was no fetal heartbeat. It was clear to (the doctor) the baby was already dead," Gibson said.
In their defense, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, defense attorneys for Price said there is no question Anderson was severely beaten but they contended Price had nothing to do with the baby’s death.
Mary Jill Donovan told the jury Price was trying to pull Anderson away from Wright — who prosecutors say assisted Price in assaulting Anderson.
Donovan says the DNA tests prove Anderson isn’t a credible witness as a victim because she told Price he was the father of the baby. She claimed Anderson has changed her story several times about what occurred on the day she was attacked.
However, the newspaper indicated Peter Rosenwald, the attorney who represents Wright, says neither story is true and that Wright was at a relative’s house at the time of the attack and never participated.
Earlier, Betty Payne, who would have been Anderson’s baby’s great-grandmother, told the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper she was "satisfied" with the murder charges brought against Price.
“I want justice to be (served) because it should be," she said.
"He wanted her to get an abortion because they were not together," Payne said. "He didn’t want his baby raised by another man."
Two doctors testified in court earlier that the baby was 29 weeks into the pregnancy and would have survived if not for the trauma Price and Wright caused.
The case brings more attention to violence against pregnant women, especially those whose refusals to have abortions spark violent rage in their partners.
Ohio is one of 36 states with a law protecting pregnant women and their unborn children and providing them with justice when they are injured or killed in an attack.
Twenty-six of the states, including Ohio, allow prosecutors to bring forth two charges at any time during the pregnancy for death or injury to both mother and child and another 10 states only protect women and children in the latter stages of pregnancy.
