A 19-year-old mother was arrested on suspicion of murder after a four-month-old baby girl found in a South Los Angeles dumpster died, turning a late-night trash run into a homicide investigation. Authorities set Takiyah Babers' bail at $2 million as detectives tried to determine whether the child was the granddaughter family members knew as Luna.
The baby was found around 10:30 p.m. Monday near the 5200 block of Alba Street, across from Holmes Avenue Elementary School, after Martha Serrano Jimenez and her daughter stopped to throw away trash. Serrano Jimenez said she shined her phone flashlight into a black plastic bag, first thinking the shape inside was a doll before realizing it was a human child. Los Angeles Fire Department personnel took the baby to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead with clear signs of physical trauma.
The detail that drew the family in was one small physical trait. The infant had six toes on her left foot, and around 4 a.m. Tuesday grandparents Herman Johnson and Laura Lacy saw reports describing a dead baby with that same feature. They said their four-month-old granddaughter Luna was born on May 25, and that the child had been staying with the 19-year-old mother in Johnson's apartment.
That is where the case took a sharper turn. Family members said the mother had given conflicting accounts to them, even as police moved ahead with the arrest on suspicion of murder. The baby's father was described as never having been involved in the child's life, leaving Johnson and Lacy scrambling Tuesday morning to figure out whether the child in the hospital was the same baby they had been trying to track down.
By 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, LAPD Newton Division officers had secured the apartment unit as a possible crime scene. Detectives were investigating whether the infant found in the dumpster was Luna, and the answer to that question now sits at the center of the case. If the identification is confirmed, the search for how a four-month-old ended up in a black plastic bag will become the question that defines the investigation.
