A Colorado man is facing murder charges this month after his girlfriend told him that she was pregnant and then went missing in 2013.
People reports Donthe Lucas, 25, of Pueblo, Colorado, a former college basketball star, recently was charged with first-degree murder for the death of his pregnant girlfriend, Kelsie Schelling, 21, of Denver.
Schelling went missing on Feb. 4, 2013 not long after learning she was pregnant, presumably by Lucas. According to the report, she told her family that day that she planned to drive to Pueblo, Colorado to share the news with her boyfriend.
Her car was found in Pueblo several days later, but Schelling never was found. She was eight weeks pregnant when she went missing, and she is presumed to be dead, the report states.
“Cell-phone records show that Kelsie sent picture messages of her ultrasound pictures taken that day to family members and also to Donthe and his mother,” Schelling’s mother Laura Saxton said at an April 2013 press conference, Westword reports. “Cell-phone records also show that Donthe asked Kelsie to come to Pueblo when she got off of work that night because he needed to speak with her in person.”
The report does not indicate why the charges are being brought now.
According to the Pueblo Police Department, “Lucas was already in custody at the Pueblo County Detention Center facing unrelated charges” for armed robbery when he received the additional murder charges.
In a statement, police said, “… because the investigation remains active, details about the investigation and what led to the arrest of Lucas cannot be released at this time.”
Family and friends of Schelling said they continue to hope someone will come forward with information about her whereabouts.
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“We will never give up on finding her and bringing Kelsie and her unborn baby home,” a post on the Help Find Kelsie Facebook page said. “We will achieve both goals as we believe seeking justice and finding them are inextricably entwined. With your help, we can achieve it.”
Charges for the unborn baby’s death are highly unlikely because Colorado does not have any unborn victims of violence, or fetal homicide, laws.
In the United States, one in six women is first abused during pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
LifeNews has reported countless crime stories involving pregnant women who have been threatened, assaulted and even killed, sometimes after they refused to abort their unborn babies.
In September 2016, police arrested a Tennessee man after his pregnant girlfriend accused him of kicking and hitting her when she told him that she would not abort their baby. And in December 2016, a Maui man was found guilty of murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend after he allegedly pressured her to have an abortion.
