Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: CEN

This Mexican husband has been charged with stabbing his beautiful pregnant 23-year-old American wife, also pictured, 19 times in the belly, killing her and their unborn child.

Serenity Solano, originally from Florida in the United States, was stabbed to death under a bridge on the Matamoros-Ciudad Victoria road in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

On 9th June 2017, she was found with 19 stab wounds to her belly and local media report she was pregnant at the time, having had a daughter with her husband Erick Uriel, 25, five months earlier.

Pictures Credit: CEN

He then ran away with their daughter but was detained after a police hunt. However, a mistake by the Public Ministry saw him walk free and he then fled to the centre of the country as a new arrest warrant was organised.

Uriel was arrested on 1st May this year in Pachuca, in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, when two women reported him of being suspicious and threatening them.

He was then transferred to the state of Tamaulipas where a judge of the city of Matamoros charged him with homicide and abortion against his wife and unborn son.

The couple had reportedly met in the United States where Uriel had emigrated. She worked to try and obtain his documentation to allow him to stay in the United States but did not manage to do so.

Police sources said the husband was physically abusive to Serenity during her pregnancy, adding: “We can even say that he forced her to come here to Mexico. He had planned to live in Cancun. He stole 7,000 MXN (279 GBP) from his father and a van and we found out that the father reported him and that is why he could not go back home.”

The body of Serenity, who was reportedly adopted as a young girl and never met her biological parents, has been returned to the United States by her adopted parents.

The case is awaiting trial.