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Jun 17, 2007 11:11 pm US/Eastern
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Man May Be Charged With Killing His Unborn Child
by Mary Bubala
PARKVILLE, Md. (WJZ) ―
A Parkville man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend may end up facing more charges.
Mary Bubala reports the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office is awaiting autopsy results before moving forward with adding a charge for the murder of her unborn child.
The new charge could mean an additional murder sentence for a man who's already been charged with one murder.
Elizabeth Walters was seven months pregnant when she was gunned down while sitting inside her car with her friend Monday afternoon in a Parkville shopping center parking lot. With help from the friend who survived the attack and with surveillance video, it didn't take long for police to arrest Walters' boyfriend, 24-year-old David Lee Miller.
Police say Miller was the father of Walters' unborn child. He's married to another woman and was apparently pressuring Walters to have an abortion. Now he's charged with her murder and prosecutors say they may consider charging him with fetal homicide in the death of their unborn child. If so, it would be the first time the new law is used in Maryland.
"It seems to me one of the things that this law was designed for was almost this exact factual scenario," said attorney Mike Lytle.
Lytle has no connection to the case. He says the state will have to prove Walters was carrying a viable baby--one that's capable of surviving outside of the womb.
"In this case, I think she was seven months pregnant and they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It's probably going to be not too difficult for the state to establish that he knew what he was doing," Lytle said.
Prosecutors say it could take a couple of weeks before a decision is made on the fetal homicide charge.
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