A man accused of fatally shooting the mother of his unborn child is a shopping center parking lot could become the first person in the state of Maryland to be prosecuted under a law that considers the murder of a pregnant woman whose late-term fetus also dies a double homicide.
David L. Miller, the man accused, could be charged with the murder in the death of the unborn child once the results from the autopsy are revealed.
Under state law, a person who kills a woman pregnant with a “viable” fetus can be found guilty of two murders.
No one has been prosecuted under Maryland’s fetal homicide law, which was enacted in October 2005.
Most babies are able to live outside the womb about 28 weeks, or seven months, after conception, Fowler said. “If that child is taken to an emergency room or pediatric emergency room very quickly [after birth], then the chances of survival are very good,” he said.
The medical examiner’s office has completed an autopsy on Walters, who police said was seven months’ pregnant, and the unborn baby, but Fowler would not release the results because they are part of a police investigation. Shellenberger said that it could take up to 30 days to analyze the more detailed information that he will use to make his decision in the case.
Miller, 24, of Halstead Road in Hillendale is accused of killing Elizabeth C. Walters, 24, and shooting and seriously injuring her friend, Heather J. Lowe, 24, as they sat in a parked car Monday morning in the Parkway Crossing shopping center on Perring Parkway, north of the city line. Police have said that Miller, who is married to another woman, was the father of Walters’ unborn child.