West Point cadet drugged pregnant girlfriend with spiked shake, then forced abortion in gruesome assault: ‘Eat this, it’s good for you’
A West Point cadet fed his pregnant girlfriend a sedative-laced smoothie and “shoved abortion pills” into her vagina, killing the fetus — then enrolled in Columbia University’s public-health masters program, a new lawsuit says.
Disgraced former army cadet Caleb T. Suh — the son of US Department of Veterans Chief of Staff Dr. Ryung Suh — already admitted in federal court that he deliberately tricked his then-girlfriend into chugging what he assured her was a “special pregnancy protein powder” shake in 2022, according to the lawsuit and his guilty plea.
The sick smoothie was actually chockful of the sedatives Xanax and Promethazine.
The ailing woman, also a cadet, was overcome with drowsiness, and that’s when “Suh shoved abortion pills into Ms. Doe’s vagina and in her mouth,” according to the suit.
The woman went on to lose the baby she had hoped to keep — while Suh ended up studying emergency medicine at Cornell University in upstate New York and received a bachelor’s degree from the Ivy League school in 2024, court documents said.
The defendant was eventually charged in the disturbing case this past spring and pleaded guilty to felony assault in June — repped by lawyer Thomas Kenniff, who previously defended infamous deadly Manhattan subway vigilante Daniel Penny. He is awaiting sentencing.
Suh then enrolled in the prestigious master’s program at Ivy League Columbia in Manhattan, the suit said.
A source with knowledge of the situation said Columbia was unaware of Suh’s criminal conviction before the media recently began inquiring about his case, noting that applications do not ask for disclosures of criminality.
The source said that after learning of Suh’s past, the school “took swift action” — but did not specify what that meant.
“For years, Ms. Doe has been forced to grapple with her experience,” the lawsuit said. “Ms. Doe’s life has been irreparably changed, and she has lost a baby that she intended to keep.
“Meanwhile, Defendant Suh matriculated at Cornell University, earned a Bachelor’s degree, and is now enrolled at Columbia University.”
It is unclear whether either Suh or the woman — both of whom would be in their 20s — ever graduated from West Point.
The pair had started dating while enrolled at West Point in 2020, with the anonymous woman discovering she was pregnant in 2022, the suit claimed.
While she wanted to keep the pregnancy, Suh was staunchly opposed and “even threatened to commit suicide if she did not terminate the pregnancy,” the suit said.
Suh then began feigning support for her and the baby — even as he obtained the abortion pills by stealing her identity and opening a fake account with an online pharmacy, ordering the drugs in her name and having them shipped to West Point, according to his plea and the suit.
“I also obtained Xanax through a friend,” Suh admitted in his guilty plea. “My intent was [to] use the Xanax to unwittingly sedate my girlfriend so that I could then administer the abortion pills, which I had obtained via the online pharmacy.”
He even asked questions on the pharmacy’s online forum, including “[W]ill I feel the pills in my vaginia?”
Suh eventually gave the pregnant young woman what he called a “special pregnancy protein powder” laced with the sedatives, the suit said. It’s unclear how far along she was in the pregnancy at the time.
Despite the woman’s revulsion at the taste of the drink, Suh insisted she finish it, “holding the bottle against her lips and forcing her to drink it,” according to court papers.
She spent the next few hours sick and incapacitated, floating in and out of consciousness.
At some point, she recalled Suh “began touching her vagina,” the suit claimed.
She also remembered finding two pills in her mouth and spat them out, but Suh shoved them back in, the filing said.
“Eat this,” Suh allegedly urged her. “It’s good for you.”
When she awoke, the young woman discovered she was “profusely bleeding from her vagina,” according to the suit, and, fearing a miscarriage, tried to call Suh, but he didn’t answer.
The woman called 911, and doctors confirmed she was suffering a miscarriage, and she was given a D&C to remove the fetus’s remains, her suit said.
But Suh, still ignoring calls from the woman he drugged, was worried about being discovered and continued posting on the pharmacy forums about what to do if the doctors “see the remaining pills” in her vagina, the lawsuit said.
The two broke up soon after and Suh went on to finish his undergraduate degree at Cornell, enrolling the fall of 2024 — the same semester where a horrific frat house gang rape allegedly occurred — and began studying emergency medicine, claiming his long-term goal was to “become a physician leader committed to advancing both patient care and structural equity.”
His former girlfriend’s lawyer, Russell Kornblith, said in a statement, “As a parent it is difficult not to be incredibly emotionally drained by thinking about what our client has experienced both by the loss of a pregnancy she intended to keep and being robbed of autonomy over her own body.”
His client is allowed to remain anonymous at least for now — which is typical for sex accusers — but a judge could decide down the road to make her name public if the defendant successfully makes a case for it.
Suh was charged in Manhattan Federal Court, before his first semester at Columbia, and pled guilty in June.
Several weeks ago, he asked to delay his sentencing until January, so he could finish his semester without interruption.
The request was granted, and prosecutors are seeking two years behind bars.