A 26-year-old Texas woman was fatally shot by her boyfriend after having an abortion in another state, Dallas police said.
He was jailed on a murder charge as of Friday.
Texas banned abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021. But almost all abortions have stopped in Texas since Roe v Wade was overturned last summer, except in cases of medical emergency.
Gabriella Gonzalez was with her boyfriend, Harold Thompson, 22, in a Dallas parking lot Wednesday when he tried to strangle her, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. She had returned from Colorado the night before.
“It is believed that the suspect was the father of the child,” the affidavit reads. “The suspect did not want (González) to have an abortion.”
Surveillance video from the parking lot shows Gonzalez “shrugging,” police said, and the two continue walking. Thompson then pulls out a gun and shoots González in the head. She falls to the ground and is shot multiple times by Thompson before running away, the affidavit says.
Thompson was arrested later Wednesday and is being held in the Dallas County Jail without bond. Court records did not list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Gonzalez’s sister was at the scene and heard the shots, police said. Another witness saw Thompson try to strangle González but he was unable to call the police because he did not have his cell phone.
At the time of the shooting, Thompson had been charged with assault on a family member, who accused him of suffocating her in March.
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The March affidavit does not specifically name Gonzalez as the person who was assaulted. But she does say that the woman told police that Thompson “hit her multiple times throughout her relationship” and that Thompson told police that the woman was pregnant with her child at the time.
The woman “reiterated that she is afraid of the suspect because he had threatened to harm her family and children,” according to the affidavit.