By Dave Andrusko
Townada and Darnell Wimms hold the funeral photo of her daughter Niasha Delain and her baby in the casket.
It would be difficult to imagine a more brutal, heinous murder. Yesterday Derrick Redd was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Niasha Delain, the very day she was to have given birth to the child she had named Aidan.
The New York Daily News reported today that “Cops previously said Derrick Redd, 38, of Jamaica admitted that he ‘hadn’t believed the child was his and urged Niasha Delain, 25, to have an abortion.’”
A bank teller Delain was stabbed 20 to 30 times in her stomach and torso in 2008, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. The Daily News wrote, “The fetus was stabbed five times.”
And what charge was Redd convicted of for killing the “fetus”? “Abortion in the second degree”—a crime against the mother.
“I feel like my daughter and grandson can rest in peace,” Delain’s mother, Towanda Wimms, told the Daily News. It was Wimms who discovered her daughter’s bloody body.
But “Wimms has launched a campaign to make it a crime to kill a fetus during a homicide,” the Daily News reported.
“The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is the law of the land for federal crimes of violence,” Lori Kehoe, spokeswoman for New York State Right to Life. “That means that if this had happened at a military base in New York State, and even if Aidan was only a month old in his mother’s womb, the law would recognize Aidan as Aidan. But because Aidan and most unborn children in New York State are not covered under the protective federal law, there could be no separate crime committed against Aidan at nine months.”
Kehoe explained that Redd
“carved open Niasha in order to stab to death his son. That child, due to be born that very day, was intentionally, specifically stabbed five times by his father.”
She added,
“It’s confounding how the assailant knew who his intended victim was but the New York State legislature can’t see him.’
We can only hope this helps passage of New York State Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which is sponsored by state Senator Patty Ritchie (R) and Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D).
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