A heavily pregnant mother-to-be was kidnapped, stabbed to death and had her baby torn from her womb, days after she revealed she was going to have a girl.
María Camila Potosí, 21, was eight months pregnant when she disappeared after leaving her home in Cali, Colombia, on July 16 for a routine antenatal check.
The young woman was found on Monday wrapped in sheets and underneath her blanket four miles from her home.
Police in the city found she had been stabbed multiple times and that her unborn child had been cut from her womb and was missing.
CCTV footage showed her climbing onto the back of a motorcycle ridden by a woman she met two months earlier through a local support scheme for pregnant women.
The rider has reportedly changed her story to investigators and is still a central focus of the probe into Potosí’s tragic death.
Cops are also still looking for the missing child.
Potosí’s mother, Alba Gomez, has urged her daughter’s killers to return her granddaughter, who she named Alahia.
María Camila Potosí, 21, (pictured) was eight months pregnant when she disappeared after leaving her home in Cali, Colombia
Before she disappeared, she shared videos of a happy gender reveal party for her unborn daughter
She said in an interview with local media: ‘The only thing I ask with this appeal and with the hopeful faith I hold that my baby is alive – is for her to be found.
‘I ask that the people who have her search their hearts and return her to me.’
Just hours before she was kidnapped, Potosí had helped care for a sick relative at her sister-in-law’s home in Meléndez before her appointment.
She then told her mother about a last-minute medical errand. Her husband raised the alarm when she failed to return home.
Before she disappeared, she shared videos of a happy gender reveal party for her unborn daughter.
She was seen smiling next to her husband, just a few weeks before she was due to give birth.
The case is being investigated as a potential femicide, though no arrests have been made yet.
Cali human rights ombudsman Gerardo Mendoza demanded a ‘swift, exhaustive investigation with a gender focus’.
CCTV footage showed her climbing onto the back of a motorcycle ridden by a woman she met two months earlier through a local support scheme for pregnant women
Her husband (pictured) raised the alarm after Potosí failed to return home
He added that the ‘extreme gravity’ of the crime ‘cannot go unpunished’.
Meanwhile, senator-elect Jennifer Pedraza said about the case: ‘They kidnapped, tortured and murdered a 21-year-old pregnant woman.
‘In this country, nothing happens. We demand justice.’
Former presidential candidate Sondra Macollins said: ‘What impotence this causes. We trust that the Public Prosecutor’s Office and police will deliver rigorous answers.’
