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Reward offered for driver who struck and killed 15-year-old girl in Santa Clarita

By Maya Lau
 and Corina Knoll
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A $20,000 reward in exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the hit-and-run driver who killed a 15-year-old Sylmar girl will be offered Monday at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Santa Clarita Valley station.

Desiree Lawson was struck the day after Christmas last year as she crossed the northbound lanes of Sierra Highway, just south of Soledad Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Family members said Desiree left home in September but had recently vowed to return soon.

Authorities received tips that a man had been seen walking with or near Desiree about 8:40 p.m., the time of the collision, but no one has been arrested in connection with her death. No vehicle description was available. Investigators said there are no street lights in the area, nor any nearby intersections or crosswalks.

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Desiree, who had five siblings, had been a cheerleader and hoped one day to become a social worker, said relatives.

“She was very loving, very protective of her family and her sisters. She was extremely intelligent and beautiful. She had a gift for being with children,” her mother, Claire Wickhorst, told The Times in December.

The teenager had disappeared from home several times but always called to say she was safe and that she loved her family.

She seemed to be “testing her independence,” said Wickhorst’s cousin, Wendy Harvey.

“It’s really sad that she was taken before she really had a chance to show the family she would turn her life around,” Harvey said.

The reward was approved by the Los County Board of Supervisors and is scheduled to be presented at 11 a.m. by local authorities, as well as city and county officials.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Santa Clarita Valley station at (661) 255-1121 or provide anonymous tips at (800) 222-TIPS.

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corina.knoll@latimes.com

Twitter: @corinaknoll

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Maya Lau

Maya Lau is a former investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she focused on rapid-response investigations into the chaos inside the USPS, problems with signature verification on ballots and challenges of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. In her prior beat covering the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, she led a team that produced a series revealing how the misconduct of hundreds of deputies had been hidden from judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys for decades, raising questions about whether some defendants received fair trials. She came from the Advocate, based in Baton Rouge, La., where she was the lead writer on a team that won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award for stories revealing the financial dealings of the long-serving warden of the notorious Angola Prison. She graduated from Vassar College.

Corina Knoll

Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

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