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Pregnant Woman Stabbed In The Face And Shot To Death By Fiancé's Girlfriend
Avis Banks was shot four times and stabbed multiple times in the face and neck.
In the summer of 2006, 25-year-old language arts teacher Carla Hughes met fellow teacher Keyon Pittman, 31, at Chastain Middle School in Jackson, Mississippi. The two immediately fell for each other, even though Pittman lived with his pregnant fiancée, 27-year-old Avis Banks.
Hughes and Pittman's professional relationship quickly turned into a “sexual adventure” full of liaisons at Hughes’ townhouse and even romantic weekends away. According to Oxygen's "A Wedding and a Murder," Hughes even used students to pass notes to Pittman during the day, and their love affair became an "open secret" at the school.
Pittman, however, thought Hughes took the relationship too seriously, and she even went so far as to introduce Pittman to her friends as her “future husband,” according to NBC's Dateline.
Pittman explained, “There was no long term. It was — it was sexual, caught up in the moment — speaking of myself. There never was a long-term plan with Carla.”
When Hughes realized Pittman would never leave Banks, Pittman alleged she started stalking him and Banks, and she even threatened to confront Banks about their affair. Four days after the two had a visit that “ended on a bad note,” Banks was found lying in a pool of blood in the garage of the home she shared with Pittman. Banks had been shot four times in the leg, chest and head, and she had been stabbed multiple times in the face and neck. She was five months pregnant, and the baby had also been killed. It was only two months before her wedding day.
While police were initially suspicious of Pittman, they later began investigating Hughes, whose cousin testified that he had lent Hughes a knife and gun the weekend before Banks’ death. After Hughes’ first interview with the police, she returned the revolver to her cousin unloaded.
District Attorney Michael Guest told "A Wedding and A Murder," "I believe that Carla felt that if she killed Avis, that if Avis was removed from the equation, that would drive Keyon into her arms, and that she would be the one standing at the altar one day with Keyon."
To learn more about the case and Hughes' trial for the murder of Banks, watch "A Wedding and a Murder" on Oxygen.
[Photo: "A Wedding and A Murder" screengrab]
