A man is accused of killing a pregnant woman in Kentucky and cutting the fetus from her womb, according to police.
DeMarcus Kenneth Johnson-Wright faces charges of domestic violence murder, robbery, kidnapping and tampering with physical evidence in the death of 41-year-old April Barlow Celio, according to a press release from the Pineville Police Department.
Police said they responded to a home in Pineville, in southeast Kentucky, on Sept. 23 and found Celio dead. The medical examiner’s office determined she was pregnant at the time of her death, but the fetus had been cut out of the womb. Investigators later recovered the fetus.
Detectives identified Johnson-Wright as a suspect. Police say he has an “extensive violent criminal history” with several warrants for his arrest in Tennessee.
Authorities obtained an arrest warrant on kidnapping and robbery charges on Sept. 25. Murder and evidence tampering charges followed five days later.
With help from the U.S. Marshals Service, Pineville police learned Johnson-Wright was living at a home on the 200 block of Timber Court Drive in Clarksville, Tennessee, about 250 miles west of where Celio’s body was found. He was arrested on Sept. 30.
Investigators seized unspecified “evidence relating to the case” at the home, according to the press release.
The release did not reveal the relationship between Celio and Johnson-Wright, a motive for the killing, or details about the alleged robbery and kidnapping. Celio’s cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Celio was a mother of three, according to a GoFundMe started by her sister, Amanda De Paz.
“My sister was murdered,” De Paz wrote. “There are no words that can truly explain what our family is going through right now. One moment she was here — someone we could call, hug, laugh with, and love — and now we are trying to figure out how to say goodbye to her far too soon. She was very loved by her family.”
Celio is survived by her three children.
“They are left with questions, memories, and the heartbreaking reality that their mother’s life ended in violence,” the fundraiser stated. “No child should ever have to carry that kind of loss.”
Johnson-Wright was being held in a Montgomery County, Tennessee, jail on Tuesday while awaiting extradition to Kentucky.