The family of a teenager accused of stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death insists the boy is “not a monster” and suggests that a school football injury is responsible for his actions.
Aaron Trejo, a football player at Mishawaka High School in Indiana, was arrested Monday after the body of school cheerleader Breana Rouhselang, 17, was found in a trash bin behind a restaurant. The girl was six months pregnant.
Mishawaka Detective Gery Mullins said the suspect “explained that Breana waited too long to tell Aaron about the pregnancy to get an abortion. I asked Aaron what he did about that, and he replied, ‘I took action… I took her life.'”
But now, Trejo’s aunt, Alexzaundra Patton-Manu, has insisted that this murderous action is “not him.”
“This is not him. This is not in his character,” Patton-Manu said. “Everybody’s still in shock.”
Patton-Manu added that “nobody knew she was pregnant. Nobody knew anything.”
Indeed, Patton-Manu is so sure that this act is “not him” that she blamed high school football for the murder.
The suspect’s aunt insisted that the accused killer was just a “typical kid” who “loved sports.” But she also blamed those sports for the murder, saying that Trejo had suffered a “bad concussion” during school football. “That could have messed with his mind,” she exclaimed.
Meanwhile, the victim’s family is distraught over the loss of their child.
Dave Rouhselang described his daughter as the “nicest, sweetest, most innocent girl you’d ever meet.”
The victim’s stepmother, Nicole, added that justice “needs to be served.”
Trejo was held without bond, and prosecutors say he will be tried as an adult.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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