Sunday, January 01, 2006
By Ken Kolker
The Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS -- For the first time, an unborn child will be included on the city's year-end list of homicide victims.

But the Oct. 14 death of Luz Maria can't be recognized by the state police or the FBI as a murder, according to state and federal guidelines.

Luz Maria is 18th on the Grand Rapids Police Department's list of homicides, just behind her mother, Silvia Sanchez-Parada, who was stabbed to death in their home at 848 Baxter St. SE. The child was due in January

Edwin Lario Munoz, 19, has been charged with felony murder in the death of the mother and assault on a pregnant person with intent to cause miscarriage or stillbirth in the fetal death.

Under state law, the second charge carries a penalty equal to second-degree murder -- up to life in prison.

However, Michigan State Police computers won't recognize the death as a homicide unless police list the victim as at least one hour old, said Theresa Page, manager of the state police uniform crime reporting unit.

The Grand Rapids case is the first time she has come across the issue, she said.

Under the state's Prenatal Protection Act, in effect since Jan. 1, 1999, anyone who injures or kills a fetus, except for the mother or a doctor performing an abortion at the mother's request, can face severe penalties.

Lario-Munoz was the first charged in Kent County with causing an intentional miscarriage or stillbirth.

Page said the law may require that the state police rewrite its crime-reporting computer program to accept deaths of fetuses -- in which charges are filed -- as homicides.

Even so, the FBI won't include the death as a murder in its annual uniform crime reports, Page said. The FBI's list of deaths that can't be included as murders include traffic fatalities, suicides and fetal deaths.