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Subject: Full-term pregnant woman shot, loses baby
Time: 7:15:00 PM EST
Author: justice1949
Full-term pregnant woman shot, loses baby
By LINDA MCNATT, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 24, 2006
Last updated: 2:59 PM
SUFFOLK — Thursday was supposed to have been Kysharia Skinner’s birthday.
But on the day the baby was due to be born, her life ended violently.
Her mother, Tammy Skinner, called Suffolk police from a cell phone before dawn. Alone, frightened and bleeding, she told the dispatcher she was in the lot of a North Main Street car dealership and had been shot in the stomach.
Later in the day, police spokeswoman Lt. Debbie George said Skinner was in good condition at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
However, the woman, who lives with her two young girls not far from downtown, was in her last trimester of pregnancy, George said, and her baby didn’t survive.
George said Kysharia’s body was taken to the Norfolk Crime Lab for an autopsy Thursday afternoon. The case represents the city’s second violent death of the year.
On Jan. 18, Deshawn Parker, 17, was fatally shot, and two other teenagers have been charged with first-degree murder in his death. One of them, Brandon Artis, will undergo a competency evaluation to determine if he will stand trial.
Artis, 15, is to be tried as an adult because of previous crimes. The name of the other suspect in Parker’s death has not been released because of his age.
George said that police are not yet considering the baby’s death a murder.
“But we’re not ruling it out,” she said.
Under Virginia law, the charge of causing an abortion or a miscarriage is a Class 4 felony, said Marie Walls, senior assistant commonweath’s attorney in Suffolk. In theory, a murder charge could result from the shooting, depending on whether the baby took a breath before dying, Walls said.
“For it to be considered murder, the victim has to have breathed first,” she said.
After Tammy Skinner was taken to the hospital, police towed a red compact car from the auto dealership. The woman’s father, Larry Skinner, who works the late shift at a local plant, said he had bought the car for his daughter.
George said investigators don’t believe the shooting was random. She declined to comment on any suspects or motive and said police are still trying to find out where the shooting took place.
Larry Skinner said he didn’t sleep well Wednesday after he got off of work at 10 p.m. When his phone rang at 5:30 the next morning, he was up immediately.
When he heard the news, he said, his first thoughts were for his daughter’s two girls, ages 1 and 4. His daughter, he said, knew that her third child would be another girl and had already named the baby.
“Why? Why?” he said, tears in his eyes. “Why would somebody want to do something like this?”
Larry Skinner said he first went to his daughter’s apartment to check on the two girls and found they were safe. His daughter had left them with relatives the night before.
Then he went to the hospital. After going through surgery early in the day to have the bullet and the baby removed, his daughter was in and out of consciousness all day, Larry Skinner said.
He said she knew the baby had died but she said little about the shooting.
Larry Skinner said his baby granddaughter, whom he saw at the hospital, was “small, but full term, perfect and beautiful.”
“Ask everybody to pray for us,” he said.
Reach Linda McNatt at (757)222-5561 or linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com.
© 2006 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com
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