LITTLE VILLAGE — A man accused of trying to conceal evidence after prosecutors say his girlfriend and her daughter killed 19-year-old girl Marlen Ochoa-Lopez and cut her baby out of her womb will be released soon following a plea deal, officials said.
The family of the victim, Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, blasted the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Monday after Piotr Bobak accepted an obstruction of justice plea for his role in the brutal 2019 killing.
Bobak was initially charged with concealment of a homicide, concealment of a death and obstruction of justice.
Bobak has been held on bail since he, Clarisa Figueroa and Denise Figueroa were charged in May of 2019. The Figueroas, who are mother and daughter, were charged with murder.
Judge Peggy Chiampas sentenced Bobak to four years in prison.
Because he has been in Cook County Jail more than three years, the plea means he will serve a few more months and then be on supervised release another six months, the Sun-Times reported.
Though Bobak’s lawyer said his client had nothing to do with the slaying, prosecutors said in 2019 he was found cleaning a carpet with bleach and a hose when police arrived with a warrant to search Clarisa Figueroa’s home.
“Not a day goes by that I do not regret my involvement in this horrible crime,” Bobak said at his sentencing hearing, according to the Tribune.
Julie Contreras, a spokesperson for the victim’s family, said Ochoa-Lopez’s husband is “in anguish” over the news.
The family knew about the possibility of the plea, but they are still devastated, she said. Relatives did not attend court in protest of the decision, she said.
The Figueroas lured a pregnant Ochoa-Lopez to Clarisa Figueroa’s Southwest Side home on April 23, 2019, with the promise of baby clothes, prosecutors said. There, the two women strangled Ochoa-Lopez and cut her baby — later named Yovanny Jadiel Lopez — from her womb, prosecutors said.
Ochoa-Lopez’s body was found in a trash can in the backyard of Clarisa Figueroa’s home after she’d been reported missing weeks earlier, authorities said.
Yovanny died after nearly two months in the Intensive Care Unit in “grave condition” at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
Clarisa Figueroa called 911 after the attack claiming she had given birth at home, prosecutors said. Authorities determined the baby was not hers after an examination and a DNA test.
Ochoa-Lopez’s family feels the state’s attorney’s office “failed the Latino community” and could have done more to make sure Bobak stayed behind bars, Contreras said.
“We feel that this is a huge misrepresentation of the rule of law,” Contreras said. “Now you have a man who confessed to cleaning up the body … walking in the street of Chicago in this area again?
“It’s disgusting to know they negotiated” with him, Contreras said. “Justice should be served.”