Broward woman killed for refusing to abort child, jurors told

Posted by Archer Margarot | Posted in Law Advisor | Posted on 04-01-2012

Whoever killed Stephanie Rabsatt also had it in for the teenage girl’s unborn son, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

Assistant State Attorney Deborah Zimet said Edward Jermaine Babbs, now 20, shot Rabsatt in the head while they two were parked in a borrowed car in a lot outside a Miramar Winn-Dixie soon after midnight on Oct. 2, 2009.

Rabsatt, 17, was 8 months pregnant with Babbs’ son at the time. But the bullet to her head was not her only wound, Zimet said. Another bullet entered Rabsatt’s body through her belly, severing the umbilical cord providing nourishment to the body of the viable fetus.

“Its heart was fully formed,” Zimet said of the baby. “Had the mother given birth prematurely, that child was viable. It could have survived in life if it had been born that day.”

The baby would have been named Jayden, family members said at the time.

Babbs, dressed in a black shirt and a striped tie, sat without expression at the defense table, avoiding the glares of two dozen friends and family of Rabsatt who showed up as Babbs’ murder trial opened Tuesday. Babbs is facing two counts of first degree murder – one for Rabsatt, and the other for the baby boy Zimet argued he didn’t want.

“I don’t want this junk,” she said, telling jurors that the words originated with Babbs. “No matter what I did, she wouldn’t abort that child.”

Zimet said Babbs tried to enlist a friend in an alibi, but that friend turned when he realized he was helping Babbs cover for a murder. The friend also led detectives to the murder weapon, which he had thrown into a south Broward lake shortly after the murder.

Defense lawyer Jerome Stone is scheduled to make his opening statement to the same jury Tuesday afternoon.

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