A U.S. Marine who is being sued for allegedly spiking a Texas woman’s drink with abortion pills has filed a countersuit, accusing the woman of lying and being personally responsible for a series of failures that killed their unborn child.
Capt. Christopher Cooprider, 34, said he did not drug Liana Davis’ drink, causing her pregnancy to end in April, as she alleged in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court last month.
Davis had accused Cooprider of secretly dissolving at least 10 abortion pills into a cup of hot chocolate that he prepared for her on April 5, when she was eight weeks pregnant, after she rebuffed his repeated requests to “get rid of it,” her suit said. She said he left her Corpus Christi home that night and stopped responding to her texts when she reached out for help as she profusely bled.
In his countersuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Cooprider denied the allegations, saying Davis, 37, intended to frame him with false claims that he drugged her that night.
He alleges in his lawsuit that the pregnancy loss could be attributed to a series of factors, including her age, a sexually transmitted disease, a bacterial infection, alcohol consumption and failure to seek medical help when she experienced heavy cramping earlier.
Cooprider said in the suit that he ordered the abortion pills at Davis’ request and gave some of them to her in February, two months before she alleges he drugged her drink, and discarded the rest.
Davis’ attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, disputed that claim and said Cooprider ordered the drugs without his client’s permission and “in defiance of her explicit instructions.”
Mitchell said his team would disprove each of Cooprider’s “abject lies” in court.
“Cooprider is guilty as sin and will be held to account for what he did,” he said.
Cooprider requested that the court dismiss the woman’s lawsuit, adding that the Corpus Christi Police Department declined to recommend criminal prosecution after investigating her claims.
The Corpus Christi Police Department told NBC News there are no active investigations involving Cooprider.
In a statement, the police department said an investigator with more than a dozen years of experience as a detective “conducted an extremely thorough investigation” into Davis’ claim that she was drugged and that the investigation was closed as unfounded.
The investigator interviewed Davis, Cooprider, witnesses, hospital medical staff, Davis’ OBGYN and the Nueces County Medical Examiner, as well as examined existing evidence and medical records, the department said.
“The results of the investigation were then shared with the Nueces County District Attorney’s Office. After careful review, both agencies concluded that the elements of a crime could not be established,” it said.
Corpus Christi police said it “stands by the results of this investigation and is confident that any honest and objective third-party review would reach a similar conclusion.”
It encouraged media outlets to request further information about the case to file an open records request but denied a request by NBC News on Aug. 19, citing confidentiality laws.
Cooprider is seeking $100 million in damages from Davis, which he pledged to give to the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit that helps ill and injured post‑9/11 veterans and service members, according to the suit.
Davis’ lawsuit, filed in the same court on Aug. 11, included text messages she alleges the pair exchanged for weeks, beginning Jan. 31, when Davis asked Cooprider for his input in case she is confirmed to be pregnant.
Cooprider said he “would like to get rid of it,” the texts show, saying the two were “not in love” or together and that it would be “messed up to bring a child into the world without both parents raising them.”
The following text messages cited in Davis’ complaint show Cooprider telling Davis, without her approval, that he would order abortion pills online. The pills were purchased from Aid Access, an online service that ships abortion pills from abroad, according to the lawsuit.
Aid Access and Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who runs it, are also listed as defendants in the lawsuit. They did not return requests for comment.
On April 2, Cooprider proposed making them “some warm relaxing tea” in what they could call a “trust building night,” according to screenshots shared in Davis’ lawsuit.
Davis accepted. When the two met up at her home on April 5, Cooprider handed her a cup of hot chocolate shortly before midnight, according to the lawsuit. Within 30 minutes of drinking it, the suit says, Davis began hemorrhaging and cramping.
Davis knew she had to go to the emergency room, but she knew she could not leave her three children who were sleeping upstairs, the suit said. They came up with a plan for Cooprider to pick up Davis’ mother, who lived nearby, so she could watch the children while Cooprider took Davis to the hospital, according to the suit.
But once Cooprider left the house, he became unreachable, the suit said.
“I am gushing blood. Please hurry,” Davis texted him around 12:30 a.m.
Davis’ mother took an Uber ride to her daughter’s house around 1 a.m. Around that time, Cooprider apologized and said he had to catch a flight the next day, the suit said.
A neighbor drove Davis to the hospital, where the fetus did not survive, according to the suit.
Back home, Davis said she found the opened box of abortion pills and a pill bottle, which she turned over to the Corpus Christi police, according to the lawsuit. The suit claims Cooprider mixed 10 misoprostol pills into the hot chocolate.
The Marine Corps confirmed that Cooprider is an active-duty captain and a flight student at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi.
Cooprider’s countersuit came as Texas legislators approved a bill that would allow Texans to sue anyone who mails abortion pills. The law, if passed by the governor, would be the first of its kind in the nation, The Associated Press reported.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
