A pregnant woman from North Carolina was reportedly killed by the father-to-be because she refused to get an abortion.
Nathaniel Elijah Dixon, a 24-year-old man from Asheville, was charged with fatally shooting Candace Elaine Pickens, 23, the Citizen-Times reported. Dixon allegedly threatened another woman with whom he had a child.
He is being held in jail in Ohio on first-degree murder charges and attempted first-degree murder and child abuse to her 3-year-old son Zachaeus Latese Waters.
Pickens and her child were found early Thursday morning in a park by Ira B. Jones Elementary School in Asheville. Dixon, who police believe was part of a violent Los Angeles street gang, then fled to Ohio after after shooting each.
According to the newspaper:
He was charged with felonies in connection with a Halloween 2014 gunbattle at Lee Walker Heights, though two charges were dropped and a third, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, was reduced to a misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon as part of a March 2015 guilty plea.
Dixon was sentenced to 75 days in jail.
Months prior to that Halloween shooting, in April 2014, an Asheville woman filed the first of two domestic violence protective order applications against him, alleging that Dixon had hit her while she was carrying his child.
“On March 23, Nate punched me in my face. Had to go to hospital to make sure everything was OK with me and the child I’m currently pregnant with,” she wrote.
Relatives of Pickens said that she was in an abusive relationship, and she managed to keep it hidden from them, according to the Washington Post.
Pickens told her relatives that she would be having Dixon’s child, but he refused. Pickens, however, insisted on having the baby.
Relatives believe that Dixon killed her because of that.
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