Wave Staff and Wire Reports
SOUTH LOS ANGELES — A young woman accused of leaving her 4-month-old
daughter in a trash bin was charged Oct. 1 with murder and assault on a child causing death.
Takiyah Rochelle Babers, 19, was expected to be arraigned in downtown Los Angeles. She is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.
Babers was arrested Sept. 29 at an apartment complex in the 5200 block of Alba Street, where the baby was found the previous night in a large trash bin. The baby has not been formally identified, but her foster grandparents said her name was Luna.
The baby was found unresponsive in the trash bin around 10:30 p.m. Sept. 28. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. A cause of death has not been released, nor has a possible motive for the crime. Los Angeles police confirmed that Babers was the infant’s mother.
The community responded to the infant’s death by creating a spontaneous memorial at the scene. Dozens of candles were lit, flowers were placed and balloons were tied to the trash bin where the baby was found.
Community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson called the incident horrific and an atrocity while urging city officials to publicize the baby safe surrender law which allows mothers of unwanted children to turn them over to authorities.
“The horrific abandonment murder of a baby in a trash bin should be a wake up call for officials to ensure there is no repeat of this atrocity,” Hutchinson said. “City officials should use all means to publicize the baby protection law.”
The law, approved by the state Legislature in 2006, allows a mother of a newborn to surrender her baby to authorities within 72 hours of birth.
The law may not have applied in this situation since the baby in this case was 4 months old.
“That was the sweetest little baby in the world,” Herman Johnson, Babers’ foster father, told Fox11. “To be found in a dumpster, dirty dumpster, it just broke my heart. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to say.”
Johnson said he questioned Babers after learning that a baby had been found in a trash bin. He said she initially told him the baby was sleeping, then said the infant was at the baby’s father’s home, which also proved untrue.
Babers’ foster mother, Laura Lacy, told reporters she “had no idea (Babers) was feeling that way to discard” the baby.
Donations to a GoFundMe account to help defray funeral and burial expenses can be made at: .www.gofundme.com/f/a-beautiful-home-going-for-baby-luna?attribution_id=sl:0daa00e6-44e8-4d66-b87b-2d3ee7700198&lang=en_US&ts=1790735055&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_content=amp30-treatment-4&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=email.
