A Maryland man has been charged with two counts of murder in the death of a woman and her 38-week old unborn baby, The Washington Post reported.
When police arrested Torrey Damien Moore, 31, for a separate fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk, they found the decomposing body of his pregnant 26-year-old girlfriend inside his Silver Spring apartment, authorities said on Monday. Police said the woman was shot seven times in early October.
Moore has since been charged in the deaths of the woman and her unborn baby and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
“Police and prosecutors in Montgomery County employed Maryland’s law against the “murder or manslaughter of viable fetus” in charging Moore. Under the statute, a person can be prosecuted for murder if he or she “intended to cause the death of the viable fetus,” Dan Morse wrote for the Post. “The law is specifically written to not apply to how Maryland addresses abortion. ‘Nothing in this section applies to or infringes on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy,’ the law states.”
Moore reportedly told police that his girlfriend had informed him she was pregnant with his child, officials said. Investigators are looking into the timelines of the woman’s death, including whether Moore traveled to California for a few weeks after allegedly shooting her. Investigators are also trying to determine how long Moore may have stayed in the apartment with her decomposing body.
Court records filed in Virginia and Maryland show Moore was also wanted by police on allegations of attacking the same woman in June, according to the report. The women told police Moore “punched and then choked her for about three minutes to the point she could not breathe,” Commander of the Montgomery County Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit Capt. Sean Gagen said.
Moore has additionally been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a convenience store clerk on Thursday. A SWAT team subsequently surrounded his apartment on Friday and later found the woman’s body on the bedroom floor. The shootings do not appear to be related, according to the report.
“It’s all completely senseless,” Gagen said. “The store clerk had just gone to work, trying to make a living. … The woman, she gets involved with the wrong person, and during a period of time where she should have been getting ready to celebrate the birth of her child, she gets killed.”
“It’s difficult to comprehend the level of evil some people can display,” Gagen added.
The woman’s DNA test is pending, so police did not identify her, though she underwent on autopsy on Saturday. Doctors found that she had been pregnant with a healthy baby boy.
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