CONNER'S COUNTRY:

Girl shot in womb thriving now (STEFANO ESPOSITO, February 27, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

A few months ago, 2-year-old Adriel McKinney began poking the pea-sized dimple on her right forearm, perhaps because she noticed she was the only little girl with a mark like that.

For her mother, Angelique McKinney, it's an encouraging sign of the toddler's growing self-awareness but also a reminder of what prosecutors have told McKinney and what she one day will tell her daughter: Adriel's father hired a hit man to kill his unborn child. [...]

On Tuesday, Cook County Judge Dennis Dernbach sentenced the hit man to 90 years in prison for trying to kill the unborn child, and for injuring McKinney and her 10-year-old nephew. [...]

As McKinney recovered from her injuries, she learned the shooter was a man from her own neighborhood. She didn't know him well. But years earlier, McKinney said, she had given baby clothes to Spencer's sisters for their children.

Spencer, a drug addict and high-school dropout, told police Adriel's father approached him. Prosecutors say Spencer made a videotaped statement in which he said the father offered him several thousand dollars to kill the fetus, because, the father allegedly said, "I don't want that baby."

Thankfully, this didn't happen in France.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2005 9:12 AM