Police: Nine-months pregnant woman kills attacker
Knife-wielding woman may have been trying to
steal fetus
Sunday, February 13,
2005 Posted: 4:40 PM EST (2140 GMT)
FORT MITCHELL,
Kentucky (AP) -- A woman stabbed to death while
possibly trying to steal a pregnant woman's fetus
had been carrying an ultrasound picture of someone
else's twins and was wearing maternity clothing
filled with padding.
Police said
26-year-old Sarah Brady, who was nine months
pregnant, acted in self-defense Thursday when she
killed Katherine Smith.
No charges had been
filed Sunday and Commonwealth Attorney Bill Crockett
said he hadn't decided whether to present the case
to a grand jury.
The attack happened
after Smith called Brady and asked her to come over
and pick up a package supposedly delivered to her by
mistake.
"She was mentally
disturbed," Fort Mitchell police Sgt. Tom Loos said
of Smith. "There is no question about it."
Smith, 22, had been
falsely telling neighbors for weeks that she was
pregnant, and a search of her apartment after her
death revealed a full baby nursery, investigators
said.
Brady told police she
was attacked when she went into Smith's first-floor
apartment to look at the woman's nursery. Police
released details of Brady's statement Saturday.
"Katie reached into
her pocket, pulled out this knife that was already
open, put it in the overhand thrust position and
attacked her with it," Loos said. "Sarah was able to
make it out into the hallway, but Katie reached out,
grabbed her by the hair, and pulled her back in."
Loos said it appears
that Brady struck Smith on the head with an ash tray
and then grabbed the knife, stabbing Smith three
times, including once in the upper chest.
Loos said that when
Brady ran out of the apartment and flagged down a
passing motorist for help, Smith removed her
maternity underwear stuffed with padding and called
911. Dispatchers kept her on the line until she lost
consciousness.
Smith bled to death.
Police described Brady's wounds as cuts to her
hands.
Loos said Sunday that
as far as he knew Brady had not yet delivered,
although her due date was reported as Friday.
Smith also had an
ultrasound picture of unborn twins, and claimed they
were her twins from an earlier pregnancy who died at
birth, but Loos said it was another woman's
ultrasound.
She also claimed to
have a scar from a Caesarean section, but
investigators said it was from another surgical
procedure.
"She convinced
everyone she knew that she had two deliveries,
previously, in hospitals and that those babies died
at the time of delivery," he said.
"She was clearly
obsessed with motherhood," Loos said.
A spokeswoman for St.
Elizabeth Medical Center South in Edgewood said
Smith worked there from January 2003 through April
2004. Hospital officials wouldn't say what job she
had or why she left after 15 months.
One of her last jobs
was as a nanny, a job she lost shortly after
Thanksgiving, when her employer began to doubt her
pregnancy story, Loos said.
Several pregnant
women have been killed in recent years by attackers
who then removed their fetuses, in some cases to
pass the children off as their own.
In December, a
Missouri woman was strangled and her baby was cut
from her womb. The baby was later found alive, and a
Kansas woman was charged with kidnapping resulting
in death.
In 2003, a woman was
shot to death in Oklahoma, allegedly by another
woman who then pretended the 6-month-old fetus was
her child. That fetus died. |