By admin 
SAN DIEGO, CA (AZFamily) — A pregnant 17-year-old from Arizona is dead and her baby is in critical condition after a shooting in Southern California early Saturday morning.
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Just after 1 a.m., San Diego police responded to multiple reports of a shooting in a neighborhood just east of Mission Bay.
When officers arrived, they found the teen, who was 32 weeks pregnant, with a gunshot wound to the head.
She was taken to a hospital, where doctors performed an emergency cesarean section and delivered her baby before she died.
The 17-year-old victim has not been officially identified by police, but a friend says her name was Jariah. Her baby remains in critical condition.
Police say the teen and her family were visiting San Diego from Arizona and staying at a short-term rental.
Investigators believe the teen’s 21-year-old boyfriend, identified as Trevon Williams, also from Arizona, traveled to San Diego separately and met up with her outside the rental before shooting her.
A friend of the victim says Williams followed Jariah to San Diego, coaxed her outside with flowers in the middle of the night, and then shot her in the head.
Police say Williams ran to a nearby canyon but was later found and arrested. He was reportedly armed with a semi-automatic handgun.
Williams was booked into the San Diego County jail on suspicion of murder.
Anyone with information is asked to call the San Diego Police Department at 619-531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
Third pregnant Arizona teen shot in two weeks
Jariah is the third pregnant teenager from Arizona shot in just two weeks. Two of them were killed at the hands of their boyfriends.
Just over two weeks ago, 16-year-old Rylee Montgomery and her unborn baby were shot and killed by her on-again-off-again boyfriend.
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“To bury your baby and your grandbaby all at the same time, it’s soul-crushing,” said Amy Montgomery, Rylee’s stepmother. “She was so scared of him and we tried to get her help.”
Why pregnancy increases danger for abused teens
Domestic violence advocates in the Valley explain why pregnancy can be so dangerous for teenagers who are being abused.
“The attention often is no longer on the person who is the father of that baby. The attention is on that baby,” said Donna Bartos, founder and CEO of BLOOM365.
Bartos says abusers vying for control often need to be the center of attention.
“Sometimes we see when that attention shifts away from them and onto an unborn child or a newly born child that they can’t take it, that it has to be about them,” Bartos said.
The red flags of abuse can be foreign to teenagers.
“Possessive jealousy, threatening to use a firearm or other weapon to do harm or to kill. The attempt to strangle someone,” Bartos said. “One of the big ones that has become so normalized, though, is threatening to kill themselves or take their own lives if that person leaves them.”
Society often encourages victims to seek help, but advocates point out that those same resources are also available to abusers.
“What I really want to say is that if you feel like you need to coerce or control your partner, that that’s problematic,” said Jenna Panas, CEO of the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.
Resources can be found online, via the 24/7 domestic violence state hotline: 800-799-7233, and at BLOOM365’s website.
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