Woman’s Body in Car Parked on Street Went Unnoticed for Days

The body of a woman sat slumped in the back seat of a Cadillac parked on a busy Van Nuys street for as long as four days before being noticed and reported Wednesday, Los Angeles police said.

Elizabeth Sedillo, 51, was found about 1 a.m. when a passerby in the 6600 block of Hazeltine Avenue noticed her and could tell she “obviously” was dead, Detective James Vojtecky said.

The cause of the woman’s death was undetermined, Vojtecky said, but police found no evidence of foul play. An autopsy was scheduled for later this week.

Officers said the woman, who lived in Van Nuys about two miles from where her body was found, appeared to have been dead three or four days.

“It’s a busy street,” Vojtecky said. But “the body might not have been very visible until somebody looked right into the car.”

A spokesman for Sedillo’s family said the woman left her home Friday but was not reported missing because she suffered an alcohol-related illness and had left the home on previous occasions. Family members searched unsuccessfully for her car on Van Nuys streets during the Labor Day weekend.

The Cadillac was parked in front of a vacant lot which is bordered by two apartment buildings. Across the street is another empty lot and the side of a house which fronts on nearby Kittridge Street. A man who lives at that house said he noticed the Cadillac on Tuesday while watering his lawn, but he did not see the woman’s body.

“There was nothing unusual to attract my attention,” said the man, who declined to be identified. “From that angle I could not see if anyone was in the back seat.”

Michael Fouse, who manages one of the apartment buildings next to the lot where Sedillo’s car was parked, said tenants in the building were shocked Wednesday to learn that the body had been there so long. Although some apartments have windows facing the lot, no tenants recalled seeing the car or the body, he said.

Fouse said four-lane Hazeltine Avenue is usually busy with daytime traffic, but he noted that the apartment buildings in the neighborhood have parking garages, which most residents use.

“Not many people park there (the curb),” he said. “There is not a big reason for people to walk by there.”

Fouse said that anyone who saw the figure in the back seat might have mistaken it for a transient who was living in the car.

Vojtecky said it was not unusual that the body wasn’t discovered, given the position of the body and the car.

“This is pretty common,” he said. “It normally takes days until a body in a car is discovered. People are too busy. People are coming and going. They don’t have time to notice what’s in parked cars.”

Police declined to identify the man who found the body. After making the grim discovery, the passerby called the city Fire Department. Paramedics who examined the body initially told police that the woman had been shot in the head.

But detectives said that decomposition of the body had led to the error and the cause of death remains unknown.

“There was no indication of foul play at all,” Vojtecky said.