{"id":309480,"date":"2024-03-30T11:33:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-30T16:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=309480"},"modified":"2024-03-28T18:36:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T23:36:55","slug":"firefighter-guilty-murdering-pregnant-girlfriend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/firefighter-guilty-murdering-pregnant-girlfriend\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighter found guilty of murdering pregnant girlfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A firefighter in Illinois has been convicted<\/a> of murdering his pregnant girlfriend before setting her home on fire in November 2020.<\/p>\n

A jury last week found Matthew Plote guilty<\/a> of first-degree murder, intentional homicide of an unborn child, residential arson, aggravated domestic battery, and concealment of a homicidal death, according to court records. Plote is said to have strangled his girlfriend, Melissa Lamesch, just days before she was to give birth<\/a> to their child.<\/p>\n

During the trial, forensic pathologist Dr. Amanda Youmans testified that Lamesch had sustained “the most hemorrhages that I have ever seen in a strangulation case.\u201d<\/p>\n

While officials at first believed the fire was accidental and that Lamesch had perished from smoke inhalation, a closer look revealed that it had been set intentionally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat there was a lack of any evidence of a fire on the stovetop, the facts that the kitchen cabinets above the stove had been destroyed by the fire, either by burning or by falling down and the fire patterns appear to move upwards and outwards from within that area,\u201d said Mike Poel of the State Fire Marshal’s Office.<\/p>\n

READ: Irish woman nearly dies from undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy after taking abortion pill<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Youmans and another forensic pathologist, Dr. Mark Peters, also both testified that they did not see significant smoke damage in Lamesch’s lungs, which would have been present had she died as a result of the fire.<\/p>\n

Though Plote never confessed to the murder, the jury reached a guilty verdict after just two hours of listening to testimony in the case.<\/p>\n

Sadly, domestic violence situations like these are not uncommon. Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States, and\u00a0many of these homicides<\/a> are linked to domestic violence situations. Recently there have been a number<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0instances<\/a>\u00a0in which men have\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0their pregnant\u00a0partners<\/a>. Some of these situations happen because the woman refuses to abort her child; in other cases, like Plote and Lamesch, the motive is unclear.<\/p>\n

Plote is scheduled to be sentenced in April.<\/p>\n

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30 seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A firefighter in Illinois has been convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend before setting her home on fire in November 2020. A jury last week found Matthew Plote guilty of first-degree murder, intentional homicide of an unborn child, residential arson, aggravated domestic battery, and concealment of a homicidal death, according to court records. Plote is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":309519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[9455,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFirefighter found guilty of murdering pregnant girlfriend<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A firefighter was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend before setting her home on fire just days before she was due to give birth.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/firefighter-guilty-murdering-pregnant-girlfriend\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Firefighter found guilty of murdering pregnant girlfriend\" \/>\n<meta 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