A Gary man was sentenced to 95 years Friday for stabbing a pregnant woman and causing the baby’s death.
A jury convicted Austin Mendez, 28, Nov. 4 on all counts. He was sentenced on murder and attempted murder charges.
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After Latricia Lacey, carrying his child, was stabbed in 2017, she was airlifted to Loyola University where her son Isaiah was born brain dead, according to court records. He was taken off life support 17 days later. Lacey herself died in 2021 of an unrelated cause.
Her father Troy Lacey said Mendez had beat her in the past and stabbed her in the leg so hard the blade broke during the attack.
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A few times, he drove to Indiana with relatives looking for Mendez.
“If I had found him, I would be sitting in his seat for the things he did to my child,” he said quietly.
When the call came after the attack, he beat the helicopter to Loyola, he said. She almost didn’t survive the attack, prosecutors said.
“I’m not mad,” he said later on the stand. “I don’t have that anger in me.”
Other relatives called Mendez a “monster” and asked a judge to give him “what he deserves”.
Mendez’s aunt Elisa Castellanos testified he always strived to be a better father, asking Lake Superior Judge Samuel Cappas to “take one more took at the evidence.”
The attack was the “drug-induced (story from) a scorned lover,” she said.
Mendez asked Cappas to “please be easy” in his sentencing, noting he was respectful, following the courtroom’s rules. He needed to be out to help his current partner, stricken with a medical condition, with their kids.
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Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Infinity Westberg said Mendez had “200 pages” of discipline records from the Lake County Jail, estimating it could be 20 incidents.
Defense lawyer Scott King said most were allegations. Mendez has been targeted in jail as a “baby killer” after the case became “common knowledge”, he said. He had one prior felony theft conviction, nothing that would suggest violence against women. There was no intention to hurt the baby, King said.
“The crime was awful, it was horrific,” King said.
He asked Cappas for a shorter concurrent sentence, rather than consecutive terms.
“I just ask you to do some balance with it,” he said.
Before her death, Lacey testified during a bail hearing that she didn’t tell Mendez she was pregnant, King said.
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Westberg retorted it would be impossible to hide a 7-month pregnancy during the stabbing.
Mendez was a “violent predator” and alleged gang member, the prosecutor said. Lacey was “brutally attacked”, stabbed five times, Westberg said.
“It was a cowardly attack on the mother of his child,” she said. “He left her there to die…in the middle of the street.”
She asked for a consecutive sentence — about 100 years in prison.
Cappas sentenced Mendez to 95 years, noting a pre-sentence report said he was a high risk to reoffend. By how Lacey was stabbed, the evidence showed intent to hurt the baby, he said.
With two victims, he sentenced Mendez to 60 years on the baby’s murder and 35 on Lacey’s attack.
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On Aug. 6, 2017, police were called to the 500 block of Taney Street in Gary where officers found a woman, who was 7 months pregnant, bleeding from her chest, a probable cause affidavit states,
The woman said she was talking with Mendez, the father of her child, “when he began to attack her,” the affidavit states.
The two had met that day “because (Mendez) told her that he had money for school supplies,” according to the affidavit. The two got in an argument and as the woman walked away, Mendez “hit her from behind, spun her around and hit her several more times,” the affidavit states.
The woman, who was stabbed in the chest, abdomen and thigh, said she fell to the ground and passed out, according to the affidavit. Two people found her and called an ambulance, the affidavit states.
The woman gave birth to a baby boy on Aug. 11, 2017, who “was on life support and was showing no brain activity,” according to the affidavit. The baby later died on Aug. 28, 2017, the affidavit states.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office determined that “the 17-day-old infant died of complications of prematurity due to maternal assault,” ruling his death a homicide, according to the affidavit.
