• Ashley Wade, 22, allegedly slashed pregnant Angelikque Sutton’s throat
  • She then cut the baby out of the dying mother’s womb, police sources said
  • Wade was found cradling baby by her horrified boyfriend who called cops  Sutton, 22, died but the one-week premature baby girl survived
  • Suspect is being observed in hospital and is yet to be charged
  • She had said that she was also pregnant, and told police the baby was hers

A woman thought to have slit a heavily pregnant mother’s throat and cutting her unborn baby out of her womb reportedly tried to say that she had just given birth to the child that survived the attack.

Ashley Wade allegedly killed her childhood friend Angelikque Sutton, 22, and performed a makeshift Cesarean section on her at Wade’s apartment in the Bronx, New York, on Friday afternoon.

Wade, 22, is then said to have ripped the newborn, later named Genesis, from her dying mother’s womb and was found cradling the child by her boyfriend.

It is believed that the Ward was trying to snatch the eight and a half month pregnant Sutton’s baby, and she told police that the child was hers when they arrived.

Ashleigh Ward, (left) 22, was taken into custody Friday after she is thought to have cut the throat of childhood friend Angelikque Sutton, (right) 22, and cut out the baby she was carrying

‘She tried to sell the idea that the baby was hers and she had just given birth right there,’ a police source told the New York Daily News. ‘But that was clearly not the case’.  

Her boyfriend Angel Praylow, 27, called the police after walking in on his partner holding the baby next to the body of Sutton.

 

Ward’s boyfriend Angel Praylow, 27, called police to the home after discovering his girlfriend and the baby next to a bleeding Sutton

‘It looks like the baby was surgically removed,’ Bronx councilman Andy King said.

‘That this is a possible baby snatch – this is unforeseeable. With the holidays approaching, what a bloody way to start the season.’

The mother was due to deliver on December 2, according to her registry on thebump.com.  

Police entered the home and found blood smeared over staircases and doorways leading to the body of the mother. A placenta and knife were found in a hallway next to a bathroom.

Sutton and her child were taken to Montefiore Medical Center, where the mother died.

Genesis is expected to survive. 

Wade has been taken to the hospital for observation and is yet to be charged as of Saturday morning.

Praylow said that his girlfriend’s due date was on November 15, but then posted on Facebook that the baby was ‘not ready to come out yet lol’.

However, Wade had been telling her neighbors that she was due next week. ‘She said she was due next Monday. She was kind of heavy,’ her landlord’s friend Mattie Sledge told the New York Post.

Pregnant woman ‘stabbed and had baby cut out of her’

It was not immediately clear if Ward was also pregnant, though her boyfriend said that she was already due and had posted pictures of an ultrasound and clothes for a baby girl

It was not immediately clear if Ward was also pregnant. Her boyfriend had previously posted registry numbers and an ultrasound photo on his Facebook, as well as pictures of clothing for an expected baby girl. 

The suspect and Sutton had reportedly known each other from their grade school days, and the victim’s aunt told the Daily News that Wade had recently been rekindling their friendship.

Wade reportedly told police that the violence happened after the two began ‘talking about the past’ at the suspects apartment.

Police sealed off the crime scene (pictured) Friday afternoon before nightfall and were still outside the apartment hours later

 Sutton’s registry page on thebump.com said that she and boyfriend Patrick Bradley were expecting their child in early December

Wade also claimed that Sutton, who is also thought to have been strangled., lunged at her with a knife and that she acted in self-defense. 

On Friday night friends paid tribute to the young mother, saying she had ‘the sweetest soul’.Patrick Bradley, her boyfriend of eight years and Genesis’s father, was seen crying at the hospital. 

One friend wrote on Twitter: ‘R.I.P. Angelikque. You were truly an angel.’ Another said: ‘Never been so heartbroken in my life!!! Angel I love u so much!!!!! Rest in peace to the sweetest soul I have ever known.’