BOULDER, Colo. -- A woman who had her baby cut from her womb by someone she just met testified Wednesday she told herself she had to survive for the sake of her unborn daughter and tried to fight back.
But Michelle Wilkins said Dynel Lane continued to choke and beat her in the March 18, 2015, attack, and she eventually lost consciousness. When she came to, she said, she was bleeding profusely from her abdomen and called 911.
Wilkins' child didn't survive -- something Wilkins learned the next day in the hospital. Lane was charged with attempted first-degree murder, assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.
The case brought calls for a murder charge, which the district attorney said he couldn't bring. Testimony in the trial began Wednesday
Wilkins testified she went to Lane's home in response to a Craigslist ad offering free maternity clothes. She was 7 1/2 months pregnant.
Wilkins said she and Lane chatted for more than an hour before Lane took her to the basement to look at baby clothes.
Wilkins said when she tried to leave, Lane began hitting, pushing and choking her.
"I just remember asking her why she was doing that," Wilkins said. She told Lane she loved her, hoping she would stop.
Lane replied, "'If you love me, you'll let me do this,"' and stabbed her in the neck with a piece of broken glass, Wilkins testified.
Wilkins, now 27, testified in a trembling voice but remained calm and composed. She appeared to be near tears twice -- when District Attorney Stan Garnett showed her photos of herself when she was pregnant and when she described learning her baby hadn't survived.
Wilkins glanced at Lane only briefly, when Garnett asked her to identify her attacker.
Lane had no visible reaction and sat with her eyes cast downward. Lane wore a grey pantsuit and a blue button-down shirt in court and wasn't handcuffed.
In his opening statements, Garnett said Lane was obsessed with pregnancy and took elaborate measures to convince friends and family that she was expecting. She posted online photos of herself with a distended belly and claimed for more than a year that she was having a boy, Garnett said.
Lane's friends even threw her a baby shower, Garnett said.
Defence attorney Jennifer Beck said in her opening statements that evidence shows Lane didn't plan the attack and never intended to kill Wilkins.
Beck described the attack as chaotic and frantic.
Prosecutors say Lane hit Wilkins with a lamp, cut her with a broken piece of glass and removed the baby using two kitchen knives.
When Lane's partner came home early from work to meet her for a prenatal appointment, he found the infant in a bathtub, according to police. He drove them both to a hospital, where Lane, holding the still-wrapped baby, told staff she had suffered a miscarriage.
Police said she then admitted the child wasn't hers.
The case roiled anti-abortion groups because Lane wasn't charged with murder. Garnett said he couldn't file a murder charge because a coroner found no evidence the fetus lived outside the womb.
That prompted Colorado Republicans to introduce legislation that would have allowed prosecutors to file murder charges for killing a fetus, but Democrats rejected it. It was the third time such a proposal failed in Colorado, setting it apart from 38 states that have made the killing of a fetus a homicide.
The charge of unlawful termination of a pregnancy that Lane faces is the result of a law intended to be a compromise between opponents and supporters of abortion rights. The maximum punishment is 32 years in prison.
