{"id":24002,"date":"2022-11-11T08:16:30","date_gmt":"2022-11-11T13:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=24002"},"modified":"2022-11-11T08:16:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-11T13:16:30","slug":"taylor-parker-handed-death-sentence-for-murdering-friend-and-cutting-baby-from-her-womb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/11\/11\/taylor-parker-handed-death-sentence-for-murdering-friend-and-cutting-baby-from-her-womb\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Parker handed death sentence for murdering friend and cutting baby from her womb"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman has been sentenced to death for killing a pregnant mother she knew and cutting out her baby to take as her own.<\/p>\n

Taylor Parker, 29, was\u00a0convicted last month<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of murdering Reagan Simmons-Hancock and on Wednesday a jury in\u00a0Texas<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0gave her the death penalty.<\/p>\n

She killed the 21-year-old in October 2020, beating her in the head and slashing her before “cutting her abdomen, hip to hip” to remove the baby.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Ms Simmons-Hancock, who was 35 weeks pregnant, was still alive after the attack – which took place at her home while her three-year-old daughter was there.<\/p>\n

The unborn child did not survive.<\/p>\n

In a statement in court, Ms Simmons-Hancock’s mother Jessica Brooks called Parker an “evil piece of flesh demon”.<\/p>\n

She told her: “My baby was alive still fighting for her babies when you tore her open and ripped her baby from her stomach.”<\/p>\n

The murder took place in New Boston, 160 miles (258km) northeast of Dallas.<\/p>\n

Parker was pulled over the same morning for speeding and driving erratically.<\/p>\n

The baby was found in her lap with its umbilical cord appearing to come from her pants in an attempt to make it seem like she’d just given birth.<\/p>\n

It was only when they were both taken to hospital that the horrific reality started to emerge.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said in the run-up to the murder Parker had made herself look pregnant, faked ultrasounds and had a gender-reveal party.<\/p>\n

The victim’s husband, Homer Hancock, said his wife was “somewhat friends” with her killer and that Parker had taken their wedding and engagement photos.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyers said Parker has been let down by family and friends who didn’t challenge her about the fake pregnancy.<\/p>\n

“There was no safety net when everyone saw the wheels were off,” Jeff Harrelson, for the defence, said.<\/p>\n

The jury in Bowie County was shown a crime scene photo of Ms Simmons-Hancock’s blood-soaked body as prosecutors made closing statements on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

They could have sentenced Parker to life without possibility of parole, but she now joins death row. Her lawyer said they plan to appeal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"Sky<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman has been sentenced to death for killing a pregnant mother she knew and cutting out her baby to take as her own. Taylor Parker, 29, was\u00a0convicted last month\u00a0of murdering Reagan Simmons-Hancock and on […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[8933,1679,1696,3281,8932,8931,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-24002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-bowie-county","10":"tag-capital-punishment","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-death-sentence","13":"tag-new-boston","14":"tag-taylor-parker","15":"tag-texas","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24005,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24002\/revisions\/24005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}