The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a $25,000 reward to help find the "coward" killer of a newborn girl whose body was found in a trash bin after her parents and uncle were shot in their Long Beach home.
"To take a precious child from her home and throw her in a dumpster, like a piece of trash, is something a heartless person would do," Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said. "We need to get the coward who committed this violent and senseless act off the street, but we absolutely need the public's help."
A man found the body of 3-week-old Eliza Delacruz on Sunday afternoon in a dumpster at a strip mall in Imperial Beach, in San Diego County, officials said.
"I'm still freaked out by what happened. I could not let that be the child’s last resting place," said Harold Sherman, who found Eliza. "I got my cart and my bike and I came over to the next dumpster and sat down and it just — it hit me. That’s a baby, that’s a baby, man, and what's a baby doing there, you know, how could that happen, how would anybody just do that?"
The discovery came one day after Delacruz's parents and uncle were found in their home with gunshot wounds.
"I would just say to anyone out there who, any idea, who saw anything to let Long Beach PD know," LA County Supervisor Don Knabe said Tuesday. "To see a situation where three people are very badly attacked, and then just to snatch a 3-week-old baby and throw it away to die, it's just, it's terrible."
Anyone with information should call Long Beach homicide detectives Donald Goodman and Mark Mattia at 562-570-7244. Anonymous tips can be provided by calling Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
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Dave Summers contributed to this report.
