Utah woman charged with attempted murder of her unborn child
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AMERICAN FORK, Utah (KSL.com) — A Pleasant Grove woman was charged Tuesday with engaging in behavior that she hoped would cause the death of her unborn child.
Janessa Jean Turner, 41, is charged in 4th District Court with attempted murder, a first-degree felony, and two counts of lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor.
The investigation began Sept. 14 when Turner was participating in a video call with the children of her former boyfriend, ages 9 and 11. During the call, Turner left her breasts exposed, according to charging documents. When the mother of the children saw this and told Turner, she “responded that it wasn’t a big deal since the children had seen her breasts before when she was skinny dipping.”
The mother then took the phone from the children, took a screenshot of the call and contacted police.
When officers talked to Turner, they detected an odor of alcohol. She was given a breath test and her blood-alcohol level was recorded at 0.301%, the charges allege.
But because Turner was also “visibly pregnant,” police took her to a local hospital to be checked before taking her to jail.
“While there, (Turner) told a social worker that, intending to kill her fetus, she had starved herself for the past two months, drank excessive amounts of Kahlua daily for the past two months, and driven recklessly around trains hoping to get into a crash that would cause a miscarriage. (She) also said that she had been camping over the past couple of days with the intention of ‘doing things’ that would cause a miscarriage or labor, and that she could then bury the infant’s body without anyone knowing,” the charges state.
Turner also said that if the baby was born alive, “she would have killed it or let it die, and that she still wanted to kill the baby,” according to the charging documents.
Court records indicate that Turner was previously convicted of child abuse, a charge that was reduced from a second-degree felony to a class B misdemeanor, for hitting a 10-year-old girl and putting her in a chokehold.