Allentown man found guilty of trying to kill girlfriend, unborn child

Gabriel Ramos’ fate came down to two words. His own name.

It was the name Ayana Rosado scrawled on a piece of paper as she lay in the back of an ambulance on the night of Sept. 10, 2020, her throat slashed and her back bleeding from a deep stab wound. Gabe Ramos. Her boyfriend. The father, she said at the time, of her unborn child.

Rosado lived, thanks to the sheer luck of a man on a nighttime walk coming across her on a wooded path near the Hamilton Street bridge over the Lehigh River.

This week, in Judge Anna-Kristie M. Marks’ Lehigh County courtroom, Rosado again identified Ramos, 19, of Allentown, as her attacker. A jury took about an hour Wednesday afternoon to find him guilty of three charges: attempted murder, attempted murder of an unborn child and aggravated assault.

When the verdict was read, most of Ramos’ supporters — his father, other family members and friends — dissolved into tears; one woman slid off the bench onto her knees and buried her head in the lap of the woman beside her.

Ramos showed no emotion as he was led out of the courtroom. Nor did Rosado.

Ramos’ attorney, Thomas Joachim of Allentown, said he planned to consult with Ramos’ family before deciding whether to appeal the verdict, which came after about 2 ½ days of testimony.

Ramos was 17 at the time of the attack. Prosecutor Ned Muir said Ramos believed he was the father of Rosado’s baby and wanted her to have an abortion, but she refused. Muir introduced evidence that included a web search from Ramos’ phone for ways to have an abortion and another search for black cohosh, an herbal supplement said to induce abortion.

Those searches were made in June 2020 after Rosado told Ramos she was pregnant. At the time, Ramos was still with his girlfriend, the mother of the child he fathered when he was 14.

DNA evidence would show that Rosado’s child was not Ramos’, despite her repeated insistence to police and at a preliminary hearing that he was the father. Joachim highlighted this fact in charging that Rosado was a chronic liar and that investigators failed to consider other suspects, including a man Rosado eventually admitted might be the father.

Ramos, after his arrest, first insisted he didn’t know Rosado and then said he only knew her from work. He finally acknowledged that he had a relationship with her and met her on the night of the attack but insisted they parted after having sex.

Ramos’ girlfriend told police he came home that night showing no indication that anything was amiss. Other relatives reported seeing Ramos during the time the attack occurred. And, despite the bloody crime scene, investigators found no DNA from Rosado on Ramos’ clothing; blood on his shoes turned out to be his own. A knife in Ramos’ backpack likewise had no DNA on it.Muir said the absence of DNA evidence “means nothing.” Rosado said Ramos was behind her, rubbing her shoulders, when he reached around and slit her throat, so the blood would have flowed away from Ramos. He also said the knife from the backpack wasn’t necessarily the knife used in the crime.

“You’d think you’d throw away the knife you used,” he said.

“There was only one person in this case who had the motive to commit this crime — the defendant,” Muir said. “He believed it was his child and he had a motive. He had opportunity. He put himself there. He’s ID’d by the victim.”

Ramos had been held in Lehigh County Jail under $1 million bail, which Marks revoked. She scheduled his sentencing for July 15.