Police Identify a Suspect, Clarissa Figueroa, in Murder of Pregnant Chicago Woman

A file photo shows 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez. (Chicago Police)

Chicago Police officials identified a suspect in the slaying of a teen who also had her infant son forcibly removed from her womb.

“Chicago Police announce three people charged in death of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, including Clarissa Figueroa and her daughter Desiree, who police said killed Marlen, and a third who they said concealed murder,” said aFox32 reporter on May 16. Police officials revealed her identity in a press conference.

The family stated that they are praying for the child.

“I have a lot of faith that the baby’s going to live. God is going to give me that miracle. We’re anxiously waiting to have him, to love him,” Yiovanni Lopez, 20, the husband of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.

Three people have been arrested and charged, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a press conference Thursday, reported CNN.

People magazine also reported that the baby removed from the womb has no brain function. Fox32 reported that the family doesn’t have plans to remove the child from life support.

Ochoa-Lopez, 19, went missing for three weeks before her body was found May 15. She left behind a 3-year-old son, Joshua, who has reportedly been asking for his mother.

“We believe that she was murdered and we believe that the baby was forcibly removed following that murder,” said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, Fox32 reported. The baby, he said, is in “grave” condition.

“My other son feels sad,” Lopez told the paper. “I can’t explain what happened because he’s still a kid, but I try to make him happy.”

”There were plenty of clues and in my view this all took way too long. They kept saying how a judge had to OK every request—to check her phone, to check Facebook,” he said. “I hired a private investigator and he found all of that information, where my daughter was murdered, and he shared that information with police,” he added.

Arnulfo Ochoa, Ochoa-Lopez’s father, meanwhile, said he is displeased with the Chicago Police Department’s response.

Reports said that Ochoa-Lopez was seen last on April 23. She had been communicating with a woman she had met in a Facebook group for mothers.

”We just want them to face justice,” Arnulfo Ochoa said on May 16. “We are not against them but we just want them to understand what they did wrong.”

Cecilia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the family, said that Ochoa-Lopez was possibly lured on Facebook by a woman who told her she was giving away clothes, The Washington Post reported.

“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes,“ Garcia told the Post. ”That’s the false pretenses that we believe led [Ochoa-Lopez] to that house.”