A six-month-old girl was found dead inside a dumpster in South Los Angeles on the night of Sept. 28, 2026, and her mother was taken into custody as detectives opened a homicide investigation into how the infant ended up in the trash.
Authorities received a report about the baby’s location and found her around 10:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28, near 5221 Alba St., in the Central-Alameda neighborhood, a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) spokesperson said. Los Angeles Fire Department personnel took the girl to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Police said the child had been left in the receptacle sometime in the previous 24 hours — a window that stretches back well before anyone raised an alarm.
Juvenile Division Takes the Case
The LAPD’s Juvenile Division is handling the investigation and is treating the death as a homicide. Officers determined early that the child was not homeless and that the death was not gang-related, according to the department.
On Tuesday, Sept. 29, the LAPD announced that a person of interest was in custody and being questioned, along with the initial witnesses in the case. Police say the baby’s mother is in custody as the homicide investigation proceeds.
A Woman Led Away in Handcuffs
A woman was led from the area in handcuffs. Video from the location showed the street closed off and officers examining the site where the child was found. A journalist at the scene watched the baby’s mother be placed in handcuffs and taken away in a police vehicle.
Officers also questioned the people who first encountered the scene, the LAPD said, part of an effort to piece together a timeline for a stretch of hours that remains central to the case.
What a Couple Told ABC7
A couple told ABC7 that the baby might be their granddaughter. They said their daughter handed the child over to the baby’s father around 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28, and that the family had not heard from him.
The infant, her mother and the child’s father have not been publicly identified.
An Unrelated Case From 2024
The death lands in a city that has seen a similarly wrenching case before. In April 2024, the body of a six-month-old girl was found on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, with a nine-year-old girl discovered alive but injured on the shoulder. Police said they believed that case was a domestic violence murder-suicide: the children’s mother, they said, is thought to have killed the father during an argument, left the two children on the highway and then crashed her car into a tree in Redondo Beach, Calif., where she was pronounced dead. The father’s body was later found stabbed to death in a Woodland Hills apartment. The nine-year-old was hospitalized and placed in safe custody. That case has no connection to the infant found on Alba Street.
For now, the newer case rests with the Juvenile Division. As of the LAPD’s account on Tuesday, Sept. 29, a person of interest remained in custody for questioning alongside the initial witnesses, and detectives were working to establish when, and by whose hand, a six-month-old girl was left in a South Los Angeles dumpster.