The mother of a 3-year-old girl whose body was discovered at a San Francisco Bay Area recycling center over the weekend expressed on Tuesday her constant concern for her daughter’s safety whenever the child was with her ex-husband. Authorities suspect him in the child’s death and report that he died by suicide.
San Jose police stated that an employee at a recycling facility in San Jose found Ellie Lorenzo’s body on Saturday. Ellie was last seen alive with her father, Jared Lorenzo, who was entangled in a contentious custody battle with the child’s mother and died on Friday from an apparent suicide in San Francisco. The San Jose Police Department announced on Tuesday that Lorenzo, 42, is a suspect in his daughter’s death.
“Ellie was stolen from me, her grandmother, and the rest of our family and friends in an evil and brutal manner,” Chrystal Obi, the child’s mother, said in a statement posted on social media. Obi did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Obi mentioned that Lorenzo had learned the court had ruled she could move with her daughter out of state before he picked up Ellie on Thursday from her home in Mountain View, California, for a court-ordered visitation.
Obi expressed her fears for Ellie’s safety whenever the child was with her father. “I wanted desperately for her constant supervision and worried for her safety each time she was with him for court-ordered visitation,” she wrote.
The last sighting of Ellie alive with Lorenzo was on Thursday at a residence in Fremont, 20 miles northeast of Mountain View. He then drove with her to his nearby apartment. According to the San Jose Police Department, Lorenzo left his apartment at 6 a.m. on Friday, drove to San Jose, removed Ellie’s body from his vehicle’s trunk, and disposed of her in a trash receptacle.
The trash bin was subsequently emptied by the garbage company, and Ellie’s body was unknowingly transferred to the recycling facility, authorities said.
Obi stated that she had no doubt her ex-husband “killed her” and took extensive measures to cover his crime, “moving her to a different city, hiding her body in a bag inside a box inside a dumpster and driving to another city to take his own life,” she wrote.
Police reported that after disposing of the child’s body, Lorenzo drove to several Bay Area cities before stopping in San Francisco, where he was found dead on Friday morning from an apparent suicide.
Authorities have not yet disclosed the causes of death for Lorenzo or Ellie. The motive and circumstances surrounding the child’s death remain under investigation, according to the San Jose Police Department.
Since their marriage ended in 2021, Obi had been fighting for sole custody, describing Lorenzo as “increasingly erratic” and “progressively unstable,” as reported by court records and the Mercury News.
When Ellie was five months old, Obi accused her husband of “emotional abuse” and “gaslighting me with excuses that don’t make sense.”
Read More: Lionel Messi Leaves Copa America Final with Leg Injury
Lorenzo “moves around the room talking to himself and becomes increasingly agitated,” she said, and “places tape over the light switches” to keep them on, according to the newspaper.
