Woman who stabbed her friend to death slicing baby from her body gives bizarre reason

A Bronx woman accused of killing her childhood friend and slicing her baby from her womb told jurors Tuesday that she actually thought the little girl was hers.

Ashleigh Wade, 22, who is accused of performing a crude caesarean section on Angelikque Sutton after plunging a knife into her pregnant friend last November, testified that she ripped the baby out of Sutton's stomach because "she couldn't have any more children die so I had to save her."

"I thought that girl was mine," Wade said under questioning from her attorney Amy Attias."Before I spoke to detectives, I thought the baby was mine. But I knew something was wrong because I didn't remember her coming out of me. I didn't remember taking off my pants."
Then Atlas asked her if she killed her friend to steal her baby.

"No," Wade replied.

Under cross examination, Wade said that after ripping the baby out of Sutton's body, Wade testified that she thought the baby like her friend, had been killed in the gruesome attack.

I was just upset that the baby was dead," Wade said. "When the baby started screaming and crying I felt happy."

Wade also accused detectives of forcing her to make false statements in her initial statement after her arrest.

"They were calling me a liar and that I was crazy if I turned it in like that," she said, referring to the original statement she had given to police. "They said it didn't sound right, it sounded crazy and I didn't want to sound crazy."

In the statement, Wade also wrote that she wanted the baby to be hers so badly that she let it "cloud her judgment." Under oath, she testified that that was also wrong.

The baby, now 22-months old, survived. Relatives named her Jenasis.

NY Daily News

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