Brooklyn Man Guilty of '1st Degree Abortion' for Murdering Unborn Child

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A man who allegedly googled “can being hit in the stomach cause a miscarriage” and “what happens if you punch a pregnant woman in the stomach,” then murdered an unborn child by punching a pregnant woman in the stomach, has been found guilty of “first-degree abortion, first-degree burglary and third-degree assault,” according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Crown Heights resident Torey Branch, 35, now faces up to 33 years in prison, the DA’s Office said Tuesday. He’ll be sentenced March 1 — nearly two years after the murder.

His victim, Mia Jones, called her ex-boyfriend a “sociopath” in an interview with the New York Post.

“He did not have to do this. He could have just said, ‘This is not my baby,’” Jones said in the interview, during which she reportedly clutched “a small silver box with the ashes of the unborn girl she planned to name Kennedy.”

Jones was nearly seven months pregnant at the time of the attack.

“After researching online whether punching a pregnant woman in the stomach can cause a miscarriage, this defendant ambushed and repeatedly punched his pregnant ex-girlfriend in her stomach so savagely that she became unconscious, needed two blood transfusions and eventually lost her baby,” DA Ken Thompson said in a statement. “We will now seek the maximum sentence that this coward truly deserves.”

In the three months leading up to the attack, Branch allegedly conducted more than 50 “incriminating” searches on his cellphone.

Then, on March 28, 2014, he put the web knowledge to use, the DA said.

Below, the DA’s description of the attack at 1414 Bergen St. in Crown Heights.

According to trial testimony, the defendant and victim had a nine-year relationship during which time the victim became pregnant. The defendant expressed that he did not want a child and became angry at the victim’s decision to follow through with the pregnancy.

On March 28, 2014, the victim and defendant agreed to meet at the victim’s Brooklyn residence. At approximately 1:15 p.m., as the victim entered into her apartment building, surveillance video shows she was followed inside by two masked men, one of whom has not been apprehended. Once inside, the two masked men choked and punched the victim about the head and body and then repeatedly hit the victim’s pregnant stomach, eventually knocking the victim unconscious.

The victim claimed during the trial that she recognized her ex-boyfriend’s voice from under his mask when he said “Move, move” during the attack.

Her attackers hit her more than 20 times, trial evidence showed — giving her an orbital facture and killing her child in utero.

The baby was declared dead within hours of the assault, according to the DA.

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