A 22-year-old woman is in the hospital after being shot and set on fire early Saturday morning. She is nine months pregnant. Both she and her unborn child are expected to survive.
The woman’s ex-boyfriend, who is also the father of the child, has been labelled “a person of interest” in the crime. He was taken into police custody on Sunday and is being questioned. The two had gone out to a movie Friday night. The abduction and attempted murder occurred as she dropped him off at his current girlfriend’s house on the 8500 block of Sherman.
“He opened the detached garage and told her to pull in,” said Warren Police Commissioner Jere Green. ”She did and before she could turn the car off, he closed the garage door behind her. Someone grabbed her by the neck and put a gun to her head.” The only things the man said to her were, ”‘you know why this is happening’ and then he asked her about how far along she was,” says Commissioner Green.
She was blindfolded and duct-taped, then driven to abandoned lot near Interstates 94 and 75. There, her assailant doused her with lighter fluid and threw a lit match on her, setting her on fire.
“She instinctively jimmies her way out of the car and starts rolling on the ground to put out the fire,” Green said. The man then fired a gun at her twice — one shot missed, the other hit her in the back. She played dead until the man ran away, then managed to free herself from the duct tape and drive the car to a gas station where she called her mother. Her mother picked her up and was driving her to Beaumont Hospital when they flagged down passing Royal Oak police officers.
According to Green, the ex-boyfriend was not happy about the pregnancy.
