Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Robbery inspires push for new feticide law

|
|
 
  
Published: April 30, 2008 at 7:06 PM

INDIANAPOLIS, April 30 (UPI) -- A bank robbery that resulted in the death of a teller's unborn twins has inspired an effort to create stiffer penalties in Indiana for killing fetuses.

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said Wednesday the state Legislature should change the state fetal homicide law requiring fetuses to be viable, The Indianapolis Star reported. He appeared at a news conference with two Republican state legislators from Indianapolis.

"This is a sad and tragic catalyst for change in the law," Sen. James W. Merritt Jr. said.

Katherin Shuffield, who was five months pregnant, was shot April 22 during a robbery at a Huntington Bank branch. She survived with serious injuries but suffered a double miscarriage.

Police had made no arrests as of Wednesday.

Brizzi pointed out that anyone convicted in the case might face as much as a century behind bars for the robbery and for shooting Shuffield but as little as two years for killing the fetuses. In Indiana, feticide or killing a fetus not yet viable carries a penalty of two to eight years.

Topics: Carl Brizzi
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 27
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego wins Finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
View Caption
Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego, California watches confetti rain down as she wins the two-day Scripps National Spelling Bee championship, May 31, 2012, in National Harbor, Maryland. Nandipati successfully spelled the word .* guetapens *, meaning to lure or ambush. UPI/Mike Theiler
fark
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...
I'll see your zombie apocalypse, and raise you "swarms of deadly spiders" invading a town in India...
Photoshop this woman at the wheel
New book is full of girls in their bedrooms, will be read by people who need to have a seat right...