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Woman Accused Of Cutting Baby From Texas Mom's Womb Claimed She Had Given Birth To The Infant, Authorities Say
Authorities claim Taylor Parker killed pregnant Reagan Simmons-Hancock, cut her baby out of her womb, then told a Texas trooper the child was hers and she had given birth on the side of the road.
A woman suspected of killing a pregnant Texas mother and cutting the baby from the womb allegedly claimed she had given birth to the child herself on the side of the road.
Taylor Parker, 27, is now facing two counts of murder and one count of kidnapping after authorities said she killed 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock and removed the unborn baby from her body before fleeing with the infant, according to a statement from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
Parker was stopped by a Texas trooper in DeKalb, Texas and told the trooper that she had just had a baby along the side of the road and that the baby wasn’t breathing. She was transported to the McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Oklahoma that morning with the baby, but that’s when authorities became suspicious of her account.
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Chad Dansby told PEOPLE Parker refused to be examined by a doctor, triggering alarm bells for hospital staff.
“She didn’t want them to check her,” he said. “We were told that, so I talked her into letting the doctor check. They called the doctor and he pretty much told us she didn’t have a baby. It was just a matter of getting her to tell us what happened.”
The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Dansby said Parker “made some admissions” during an interview that gave authorities enough probable cause to detain her.
She was later arrested on charges of murder and kidnapping and was booked into the Idabel City Jail.
Authorities said she waived extradition to Texas in a McCurtain County District Court Tuesday morning.
Hancock was found dead in her home around 10:20 a.m. Friday morning after New Boston Police had received a 911 call about a “deceased person,” according to a statement from police.
Hancock’s mother, Jessica Brookes, later told local station KSLA that she discovered her slain daughter — who was just a month away from giving birth to her second daughter — on Friday after she had been attacked.
“A piece of us is gone now,” she told the outlet.
Just months before she was killed, Hancock happily announced the pregnancy on Facebook.
“(S)ome of you know, some of you dont... but we are having another SWEET BABYGIRL come november the 10th (give or take). She already acts like her daddy & big sister. We cannot wait for our Braxlynn Sage to be here. Daddy is definitely out numbered,” she wrote in the August post.
Staff Lieutenant Lonny Haschel of the Texas Department of Public Safety declined to provide any additional details about the case to Oxygen.com — including whether Parker and Hancock had known each other before the murder — but a PayPal fundraiser set up to benefit Hancock’s husband, Homer, and her 3-year-old daughter, Kynlee Grace, said the 21-year-old and her baby had been “selfishly killed by someone Reagan considered a friend.”
