A pregnant Colorado woman Wednesday answered a Craigslist ad at a stranger's home, where she was attacked by a another woman who stabbed and "removed" her unborn child.
Police responded to the attack in Longmont, Colorado, after receiving a call of a stabbing, the Denver Post reported.
Commander Jeff Satur said police could hear someone calling for help inside the home. Officers located the woman who appeared to have been beaten and stabbed in the stomach with a knife.
The 26-year-old victim was taken to the hospital where she underwent surgery and is expected to survive. KDVR-TV reported that she had been seven months pregnant.
The baby did not survive the attack.
DISTURBING: Pregnant woman stabbed, baby removed. Suspect shows up at hospital w/dead baby claiming miscarriage.
The 34-year-old attacker was found at a hospital, where she had taken the baby and claimed to have suffered a miscarriage, police said.
Her husband apparently drove her and the baby to the hospital, police said, and then returned to the scene of the crime. The man may have believed she had just miscarried, and officers said he is not a suspect in the case.
The woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, first-degree assault, and child abuse knowingly and recklessly resulting in death.
The victim did not know the assailant, and was lured to her house after responding to a Craigslist ad for baby clothes. Police said the suspect may be mentally ill.
"This is a tragic case for a mother right now," Satur told the Post. "She came by this house. She was attacked, and her baby was removed from her."
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The alleged attacker has two children of her own, Satur said.
Police have a search warrant for the suspect's home, and are still investigating the crime.
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said they will consider if the charges are appropriate, since the case involves an unborn child, which may make it difficult to pursue homicide charges.
Dynel Lane, the suspect who has been accused of stabbing a pregnant woman and cutting her unborn child out, reportedly told her husband she had just miscarried before he watched the baby take a "gasping breath."
The baby did not survive the attack, but whether or not it was alive — and if so, for how long — could determine if homicide charges are brought against Lane.
According to the police report, Lane's husband, 36-year-old David Ridley, said he had come home in the afternoon with plans to take his wife to a prenatal checkup appointment. Instead, he found her covered in blood.
She told him she had just miscarried and the baby was upstairs in a bathtub. He ran to the tub, where he found the child. He rubbed the baby, rolled it over, and then heard it "take a gasping breath."
He wrapped the baby in a towel and told Lane to get ready to go to the hospital. Ridley escorted her into the emergency room at the hospital and then left to pick up Lane's two teenage daughters from school.
He returned home with the two daughters to find police inside. Lane's daughters were brought to the City of Longmont Safety and Justice Center for an interview.
One of the daughters said Lane had showed her an ultrasound in December 2014 and said she was going to have a baby boy.
In 2002, Lane, who was then known as Dynel Cruz, lost her 19-month-old son in a drowning accident, the Longmont Times Call reported.
The doctor who examined the victim, identified as 26-year-old Michelle Wilkins, said the incision on her abdomen appeared to be well performed, and stated the person who did it "would have to have researched the subject of Cesarean births...to achieve the level of accuracy," according to the police report.
State records show Lane was a certified nurse's aid, but that her license expired in 2012.
An autopsy of the baby is scheduled for Friday and will determine if it was alive outside the mother's womb.
Wilkins is still at the hospital, but is awake and answering questions. She is expected to make a full recovery.