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20-Year-Old Woman Slain in Ax Murder Was 9 Weeks Pregnant: Report

Tiffany Meier
By Tiffany Meier
April 22, 2019New York
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20-Year-Old Woman Slain in Ax Murder Was 9 Weeks Pregnant: Report
Crime scene tape with police car lights. (Geralt/Pixabay)

The 20-year-old mother who was nearly decapitated in the Brooklyn ax murder was nine weeks pregnant, family members said, according to multiple new reports.

Savannah Rivera, who leaves behind a son just shy of his fourth birthday, was excited to have another child.

“She was happy about it. She was happy to have another child,” family friend Margaret Cruz told the New York Post.

However, on Saturday, April 20, Rivera stayed over at her friend Angela Valle’s apartment in Brooklyn. Valle’s boyfriend, Jerry Brown, was also there, according to reports.

In the early hours of Saturday, he hacked Rivera to death with an ax, nearly decapitating her, according to reports. Several of her fingers were also severed.

“She was nine weeks pregnant,” Rivera’s sister, Tatiana Cabrera, told the New York Post.

“We lost two lives,” Cruz added. “I told the medical examiner, ‘You have to check if she was pregnant. Because that’s two lives he killed.'”

Rivera’s son still doesn’t know why his mother isn’t home.

“He’s only three years old. He doesn’t know what’s going on,” Cabrera said.

The Crime

Police found out about the crime when Valle ran from the apartment and got into an Uber, covered in blood. When the Uber driver saw her still bleeding from wounds to her head and stomach, he called 911.

As Valle was being transported to the hospital, she told emergency personnel that she was attacked by her ex-boyfriend and that her daughter and friend were still in the apartment, police said.

Valle’s four-year-old daughter was still inside the eighth-floor apartment, in a rear bedroom, asleep and unharmed, when police arrived at the scene.

Since then, police arrested 34-year-old Brown on charges of murder, attempted murder, and criminal weapons possession, according to CBS New York.

Previous Criminal History

Brown has an extensive criminal history, with nine prior arrests, according to records obtained by the New York Daily News. He was also previously sentenced to six to eight years for attempted murder in 2003. The year before, in 2002, he also pleaded guilty to shooting a man, when he was 17 years old, according to public records.

According to the report, Brown broke down crying in an interview with WPIX-TV on Saturday when he found out his girlfriend was fighting for her life in the hospital. He said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and had no recollection of attacking the women earlier that day.

After the interview, he turned himself in to the police, where he was interviewed and arrested.

On Sunday, April 21, he was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation, according to the Daily News.

Online he also had a notorious reputation. On Facebook, he was known as the “Grim Creepa.” His former girlfriend referred to him as “Mr. 187,” a slang term for murder used in gangster songs that comes from California’s penal code 187.

Police found an ax covered with blood in the building’s trash compactor and it was taken into evidence as the potential murder weapon, according to CBS New York.

NYPD Brooklyn North Deputy Chief Michael Kemper said in a press release that the incident was a “brutal vicious attack” and added that the incident was not random.

He said the suspect knew both women. While a motive behind the incident is still not clear, Kemper said there’s a “good possibility” that the case will be categorized as domestic violence.

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