High school football player kills pregnant girlfriend indiana

Aaron Trejo, 17, told detectives he killed Breana Rouhselang because she waited too long to tell him she was pregnant, preventing her from getting an abortion.

Aaron Romeo Trejo won’t be free until his 80s if he has to serve his full prison sentence for murdering another teen who was pregnant with his child.

Trejo, 18, of Mishawaka, Ind., was sentenced Tuesday to 65 years in prison for felony murder and feticide in a St. Joseph County superior courthouse. The former high school football player was 16 when he stabbed 17-year-old Breana Rouhselang in the heart and placed her body in a dumpster behind a pizzeria in December 2018, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Trejo had been ruminating for a week about killing Rouhselang, a multisport athlete and cheerleader who also managed the football team, the affidavit stated.

Rouhselang was a lifelong athlete and wanted to study athletic training when she graduated from high school, according to her obituary.

She had waited too long to tell him about the pregnancy, Trejo told authorities, and neither of them wanted the baby. She was six months pregnant with a girl when she died, according to her obituary.

The state of Indiana doesn’t allow abortions after 22 weeks, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Trejo used a knife he brought from home — an item he thought would kill her faster, he admitted to homicide investigator Gery Mullins hours after Rouhselang had been reported missing.

Rouhselang’s mother, Melissa Wallace, knew that her daughter had gone to an alley behind the house to speak with Trejo, the father of her unborn child, around 11 p.m. on a Saturday, according to court documents.

Rouhselang’s mother and her father, Dave Rouhselang, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Wallace told police she woke up about two hours later, and her daughter was missing. She rushed to Trejo’s house, where he told her that Rouhselang never showed up to their scheduled meeting. He also told Wallace that he had lost his phone, so she wouldn’t be able to reach him.

Wallace persisted, searching for her daughter and calling her friends before she alerted police.

In the place the teens were supposed to meet, police found glasses, a stocking cap and a bloody hat — items that matched what Rouhselang was last reported wearing, according to court records. More blood was spotted before Rouhselang’s body was discovered with a black plastic garbage bag covering her head and upper torso, according to the affidavit.

Trejo and his parents were taken to a homicide unit, where Trejo recounted the same story he had given to Rouhselang’s mother and police. He ultimately admitted to killing her under Mullins’s questioning.

“I took action. … I took her life,” he told the detective, before confessing that he threw his knife and Rouhselang’s phone into a river.

An autopsy revealed that Rouhselang died of stab wounds and suffered from strangulation before her death, according to the affidavit.

Trejo pleaded not guilty days after he was booked. He changed his plea to guilty in October, court records show.

Aaron Trejo, 16, was arrested Dec. 9 in connection with the murder of Breana Rouhselang, 17, and her unborn child in Mishawaka, Ind. (Video: WNDU)

The St. Joseph County Superior Court judge who sentenced Trejo on Tuesday ordered a DNA sample from him but didn’t specify why.

Trejo’s attorney and his sister didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

It’s unclear whether Trejo and Rouhselang, who had known each other since elementary school, had an ongoing romantic relationship or a history of violence.

The outcome of their relationship conforms to an April 2019 Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics study that found 90 percent of adolescents killed by current or former partners were girls. The average age of the victim was around 17.

Correction: A previous version of this story reported that 90 percent of victims killed by partners were adolescent girls. The correct statistic is that girls make up 90 percent of adolescents killed by partners. This post has been updated.

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