TX State Rep Riddle Joins Call For 14th Fort Hood Murder Charge

State Representative Debbie Riddle has abutting 30 of her colleagues in respectfully requesting that the Army allegation Major Nidal Malik Hassan with the annihilation of an approaching child.

Private Francheska Velez, one of the 13 accustomed victims of the annihilation in Fort Hood, was nine weeks abundant if she was gunned down by Hassan on November 5.

Velez was alone 21 years old, and had just alternate from a bout in Iraq that was beneath on anniversary of her pregnancy. Media letters announce that she was set to be beatific aback to her hometown of Chicago this month. Now, Riddle and the added associates of the Texas Conservative Coalition accept beatific a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh allurement that Hassan be captivated amenable for the afterlife of Velez's baby.

"Each of the 14 souls that were baseborn by this monster and his afraid act of agitation were innocent," Riddle said. "But none were added innocent than the approaching adolescent whose activity never even had a adventitious to absolutely begin."

In the letter beatific endure Wednesday, the legislators point to a accouterment in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which states that anyone who is committing an actionable act that causes the afterlife of a adolescent in utero shall be answerable with a abstracted crime, just as if the abandon had been committed adjoin the child's mother.

"Indeed, such action would accentuate the axiological point that approaching accouchement have to be afforded the aforementioned acknowledged protections adjoin offenses that can be committed adjoin individuals, such as homicide," the letter states.

The UCMJ statute mirrors a agnate act anesthetized in 2003 by the 78th Texas Legislature, which provides that anyone who commits a abomination that causes the afterlife or abrasion of an approaching adolescent can be answerable as if the abomination was committed adjoin anyone who was born.

Representative Riddle was a coauthor of the House adaptation of the measure.