100 Mourn Unidentified Infant Girl Found Dead in Simi Valley Trash Bin

Nearly 100 mourners came to a Simi Valley cemetery Monday to pay respects to a child they never knew--a baby girl who was found dead Jan. 6 in a trash bin behind a neighborhood supermarket.

The Simi Valley Police Officers’ Assn. arranged the funeral at Assumption Cemetery. Some of the mourners, drawn by a police announcement, brought flowers to skirt the small, white casket in which the unnamed child was buried in the shade of a juniper tree.

“Someone had to care,” explained Pat Matuzak, 43, of Simi Valley, accompanied by her teen-age daughter, daughter-in-law and baby granddaughter.

“I didn’t know this child, but it’s like my own,” added another mourner, Robyn Simone, 28, of Simi Valley, who held her 5-month-old daughter in her arms. “It’s like I lost my own child.”

Father Michael Bunny, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Simi Valley, and the Rev. Jill Robertson, a pastor at Simi Valley Presbyterian Church, officiated.

Police have no promising leads in the investigation of the baby’s death, Detective Sgt. Tony Harper said. Fingerprints found on a trash bag wrapped around the baby are being checked against prints of about 4 million people with arrest records in California, he said.

“The only way we’re really going to solve it is if someone from the community comes forward, or if the mother comes forward, or has an attack of conscience and decides to come clean on this,” Harper said.

The service lasted about half an hour, or about one-sixth the time coroner’s officials believe that the baby had lived before dying of exposure.