Police say a 16-year-old Georgia girl was murdered by her 20-year-old ex-boyfriend, and he has been charged with murder, feticide, and felony assault.
Gwinnett County Police issued a press release about the death of Mia Campos, whose body was found on July 15 by her family after they used a cell phone app to track her location. They said Mia had left her home on a weekend and never returned home, which raised concerns. She was over seven months pregnant at the time.
According to Mia’s brother Alexis, her ex-boyfriend Jesus Monroy picked her up in the evening to take a trip to the gas station, which Alexis Campos said was a typical occurrence. But he said he could feel that something was wrong. “They would always go somewhere,” he said. “They would go out to eat. They would go to appointments. But for some reason, before she left, I had kind of a bad feeling.”
After they checked the app, Mia’s family noticed her activity stopped at 10:58pm, so they asked Monroy if he had seen her; he told them no. Using the app, they found her body laying face down in a patch of woods, turning purple. They called 911, but it was too late. Mia had already passed away.
“Face down. It was hard. I knew something was wrong. Her lips and her nose. They murdered my baby,” Mia’s father, Edward Campos, said. “Somehow we came this way, and because I didn’t have a flashlight, I just had my phone. Then I said, ‘She’s right there.’ It just broke my heart. Thank God that I found her.”
READ: ‘Nightmare’: Pregnant mom murdered two days after learning she was expecting third child
Initially, they hoped Mia’s baby might possibly have survived, only to learn they lost their grandchild, too. “She was just lying there… already cold,” her mother, Miriam Zarate, said. “I touched her belly, hoping that maybe her baby would still be alive, but too much time had passed.”
Alexis said Monroy’s first concern was keeping vital information from the police. According to Alexis, the first thing he said at the discovery of Mia’s body was, “Do me a favor. Don’t tell them that I’m the one that got Mia pregnant… that I’m the father of the son.”
Monroy was first arrested for giving false statements to a police officer, and then the charges were upgraded to include two counts of murder, one count of feticide, and one count of assault, after the autopsy confirmed that Mia had been murdered, dying by asphyxiation. A GoFundMe account has been created to help pay to give Mia and her preborn son a dignified burial.
“Mia, my daughter, the girl of my eyes, my baby, has passed away with her son in her belly,” Zarate wrote on the fundraising page. “I ask God to watch over her and her baby, now she and my grandson are in heaven with God.”
