A man in Kentucky has been given a $25,000 bond after he allegedly attacked a pregnant woman and tried to kill her.
Kerrick Turner has been charged with violation of an emergency protection order, strangulation, attempted murder, and domestic violence after he violently beat his ex-girlfriend, who is 10 weeks pregnant with his child. The unnamed woman said that she is upset her abuser didn’t receive a harsher bond.
“It’s not just attempted murder on me, but the baby, too,” the woman told Fox 19.
According to court records, Turner had been harassing the woman for months before the moment he attacked her Sunday morning. As part of the assault, he tried to strangle her with a lamp cord. Turner’s mother witnessed what was happening and called the police.
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The woman further detailed her attack to Fox 19. “I was trying to run to the neighbor’s house,” she said. “He chased me and I ended up on the ground. I didn’t know that he had hit me in the head. I remember crawling to the neighbors and beating on their door. I just don’t know anything. I woke up in the ambulance after that.”
The woman also detailed feeling relief at finding out that her preborn baby is okay. “At the hospital was the first time seeing my baby on the ultrasound,” she said. “I broke down crying.”
The woman’s experience as a victim of attempted murder underscores a threat that many pregnant women face: domestic violence. Currently, homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States, and most of these homicides are linked to domestic violence situations. Recently, there have been an increasing number of instances in which men have killed their pregnant partners.
Thankfully, this woman was able to escape from her abuser, though not before her life and the life of her preborn child were endangered. She said she was unaware of his violent past. “As a person that has been through that type of stuff, it hurt knowing that I was with a monster,” she said. “Nobody told me that was around me. They decided to tell me after he started acting like this.”
The woman told Fox 19 she is looking forward to becoming a mother.
