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Late July 2005 - LaToyia Figueroa, 24, is five months pregnant and has a 7-year-old daughter. She has two tattoos – an angel on her right wrist and another with her daughter’s name. She was last seen at 59th and Walton Streets in Southwest Philadelphia on July 18, 2005. She reportedly took the day off from work Monday to spend time with her boyfriend, the father of her unborn child.
He agreed to speak provided CBS 3 withheld his identity. “I went to her doctor’s appointment and then we went to get something to eat and came back to my house and she left around 3 – 3:30 p.m,” he said. Police said the father of the unborn child has been cooperating with investigators.
She has not been seen or heard from since.
Police say she has not used her cell phone and that there has been no activity on her credit cards.
Police said they do not have suspects or a motive.
Melvin Figueroa says his daughter would never go such a long period of time without seeing or speaking to her seven-year-old daughter. He told CBS 3 that LaToyia was jumped the week before she went missing. Figueroa believes she was targeted because the suspect kicked her in the stomach and fears something worse has happened to her this time.
A $10,000 reward is being offered for information. The Citizens Crime Commission of Delaware Valley offered the reward.
Recently almost 30 people searched West Philadelphia for LaToyia Figueroa, posting flyers, searching nearby wooded areas, and canvassing the neighborhood - going door to door.
The disappearance of LaToyia Figueroa has led to a public discussion, evaluating the media’s tendency to promote white crime victims over other races.
August 20, 2005 – The remains of LaToyia Figueroa were found in a grassy, partially wooded lot in Chester, 13 miles from Philadelphia. Police arrested Stephen Poaches, 25, the father of her unborn child. District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said Poaches would be charged with two counts of murder and related offenses for the deaths of 24-year-old LaToyia Figueroa and her fetus.
"Now she can rest in peace,'' said the woman's father, Melvin Figueroa. "All I want is justice with that peace.''
The woman's uncle, Jose Figueroa, said as terrible as the discovery of the body was, it puts an end to the weeks of fear and not knowing about LaToyia, who was five months pregnant at the time of the disappearance. "We can actually try to go back to a normal life,'' he said.
Relatives and friends have papered the city with flyers and held large-scale searches for any sign of Figueroa, recently marking one month since her disappearance. A reward fund for information had reached $100,000, including donations from the restaurant where she worked.
The case attracted a brief flurry of television attention after several Philadelphia-area bloggers waged a campaign urging networks to give the same attention to Figueroa, who is black and Hispanic, as they did to Natalee Holloway, a white woman who disappeared in Aruba.
UPDATE 2007
Stephen Poaches convicted of two counts of 1st degree murder.
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