Drama in Court - Norwalk Teen Charged with Attempted Murder in Attack on Pregnant Girlfriend

NORWALK -- The arraignment of a city teen charged with trying to kill his pregnant girlfriend was temporarily halted at state Superior Court at Norwalk Monday afternoon when pandemonium broke out in a courtroom and a relative of the victim tried to climb a glass partition and get at the defendant.

Judge Bruce Hudock ordered the courthouse's largest courtroom cleared after Judicial Marshal Darren Opper pulled the woman off the partition and angry screams could be heard over the defendant's mother shrieking "That's my baby. That's my baby. He's only 17."

The 12:25 p.m. incident seemed to have been sparked by the cries of defendant Terrence Crawford's mother, who began wailing when he was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and relatives of the injured teenaged girl became upset at her cries for mercy and understanding.

The girl remains at Norwalk Hospital in intensive care with an punctured lung and numerous knife cuts over her body, her mother said. The fetus appears to have survived the attack.

By the time the court was ordered cleared, a number of marshals had moved to restrain the relatives upset at Crawford.

When Hudock allowed everyone back into the courtroom a little over 10 minutes later, he announced he would jail anyone who disturbed the proceedings.

"Do the smart thing and leave the courtroom if you cannot control yourself," he said, before bringing Crawford out for the second time with as many as 14 marshals standing by.

Crawford, 17, of 9 Armstrong Court, Norwalk, is charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault, and resisting arrest; Hudock ordered his bond be raised from $250,000 to $500,000. The hearing proceeded smoothly and no one was arrested.

The mother of the victim, who is not being named because it would identify her daughter, said Crawford lured her daughter into the woods next to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in order to stab and kill her because she was pregnant with Crawford's baby. She said she was happy that Hudock raised Crawford's bond.

"I think it is crazy and I just want him to pay for what he did," she said.

The case was transferred to the Part A docket at the Stamford courthouse, where more serious crimes in the area are handled.

In numerous police reports contained in Crawford's file, a neighbor called police Saturday night just before 11 p.m. to report that a bleeding girl had been left on the steps of 31 Clay Street.

When police arrived, a resident told police the two young who men carried the girl out of the woods before leaving them near a home, ran down some steps connecting Clay Street with Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

The girl, 16, told the officer that she had just been stabbed by Crawford, her boyfriend and a friend of his in the woods. She had sustained several left side puncture wounds, a cut on the left side of her neck, a cut on her left elbow, cuts on both hands and a cut just above the left side of her buttock, police said.

The girl said she met Crawford and his 17-year-old friend at the South Norwalk train station, where they had just come from Bridgeport. She said Crawford told her he was having trouble with police and they needed to lay low and he took her into the wooded area. She said she told him she was pregnant with his baby.

That is when Crawford and his friend began hitting her.

"Terrence must have had a knife because I realized I was stabbed where Terrence was hitting me," she said in a statement to police.

Crawford's friend, who is not being identified because he is 17, told police Crawford was talking about killing his girlfriend because she is pregnant, but he thought he was kidding. Crawford told the friend that he "don't want no damn baby," the friend's told police; as they were standing next to the woods, Crawford told her he needed to talk to her.

"As he began walking in the woods with her I saw him begin to pull a knife out of his jeans. I thought to myself he is really going to stab her. A couple of minutes later I heard her screaming really loud. She was yelling, "it hurts" and "I'm bleeding," his statement said.

After the girl was brought to the Clay home and the call went out for the stabbing, police officers traveling from the police department on Monroe Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive saw two young men.

The pair began to run when police got close and began questioning them. Crawford ran north on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and, after a brief foot chase that ended after at least one officer pulled his service weapon, Crawford was placed in handcuffs.

The arresting officer noticed Crawford had cuts on his right hand and blood on his clothes and body.

He told the officers, "I didn't do anything. I gotta check on my girl." Then he said, "It's my girl's blood. I tried to carry her from the woods. I gotta see if my girl's OK," a police report by the arresting officer said.

Norwalk Teen Arraigned for Allegedly Stabbing Pregnant Girlfriend

NORWALK - A Norwalk teen faced a judge today after police say he stabbed his pregnant girlfriend over the weekend.

The incident allegedly happened Saturday night on Clay Street and ended near the train station.

Police say 17-year-old Terrance Crawford was upset after finding out that his 16-year-old girlfriend was pregnant.

The victim's family says she and her baby are expected to be OK.

Crawford has been charged with attempted murder and is being held on $5,000 bond.

Pregnant Mom's Stabbing Still a Mystery

(CNN) -- Jenna Nielsen was 22 years old, 8½ months pregnant and looking forward to bringing her third child into the world when her life came to a violent and abrupt end on June 14, 2007.

She was working her new job on a newspaper delivery route she'd taken to help her young family make ends meet. That's when police say she was stabbed to death in front of a convenience store in Raleigh, North Carolina -- a crime that has police and family members still looking for answers.

Marking the two-year anniversary of his wife's death, with no arrests and no named suspects announced by police, Tim Nielsen can only shake his head when he ponders who may have targeted his wife.

"I believe she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time," said Nielsen, who has returned to his native Utah, where his family helps him raise his two children -- Schyler, 5, and Kaiden, 2. "My wife had no enemies."

Police say that two years ago last Sunday, Nielsen arrived at the AmeriKing Food Mart about 3:30 a.m. to deliver papers.

She'd parked and just finished loading the newspaper vending machine when she was attacked on the way back to her car.

Nielsen was stabbed in the neck. Two of her car doors were left open and her purse and car keys were still inside, police said.

Authorities will not publicly speculate on a motive. But Jenna's family believes the attack may have been an attempted sexual assault and that Jenna fought back.

Investigators say they have received thousands of tips and interviewed hundreds of people, but they still don't have a clear picture of a suspect.

Laura Hourigan, spokeswoman for the Raleigh Police Department, said investigators remain confident the case can be solved.

"This case is actively being investigated still," she said. "But we have a few missing pieces and hope for the public's help."

Early in their investigation, the police released a composite sketch obtained from two witnesses who saw the attacker fleeing the scene of the crime.

But they have since backed away from the image, saying it was misleading people. They describe Nielsen's attacker as a short, slightly built man in his late teens or early 20s with black hair pulled back into a long ponytail.

He was wearing a dark sleeveless shirt and baggy blue jeans shorts, according to witnesses.

Shortly after Nielsen's death, a knife was found by a homeless man not far from the scene of the crime. Police won't comment on whether the knife might be the murder weapon. There has been other evidence collected.

"They found DNA, but I can't say more than that," Tim Nielsen said.

Other members of Nielsen's family quote police as saying they have DNA evidence from the killer, but have not been able to match it with anyone they've interviewed over the years.

The family has stayed active in keeping Nielsen's case in the public eye.

They've held "Vigils Against Violence" the last Sunday of every month and maintain justice4jenna.org, a Web site devoted to her memory and to the effort to track down her killer.

"It's hard to believe that it has been two years since someone selfishly stole you from our family," reads the site's home page. "There isn't a day that goes by that you and Ethen [the name planned for her unborn child] are not in our thoughts.

"Schyler and Kaiden are growing so fast. They look like you, act like you and laugh like you -- for that we are able to see you each and every day through them. Schyler asks about you often and helps Kaiden remember Mommy."

The family also have been advocates for the so-called Unborn Victims of Violence Act, state legislation that would create a fetal homicide law in North Carolina.

Currently, state law does not consider a killing a double homicide when an expectant mother is slain.

Jenna Nielsen's father, Kevin Blaine, takes every chance he can to plead for help from the public

"Help find the people that did this to her," he said. "The person who did this is still out there."

The family is offering a $15,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the individual responsible for Nielsen's murder.

Anyone with any information on this crime is asked to call the Raleigh Police Department at (919) 227-6220.