Woman Arrested in Death of Infant Found in Cabinet
Police arrested a 34-year-old employee of Yamaha Corp. of America on Wednesday on suspicion of killing a newborn girl whose body was stuffed inside a plastic bag and hidden in a locked file cabinet, authorities said.
Police allege that Lisa Kay Fetchel, a parts clerk at the company for 10 years, stashed the baby’s body in a cabinet in the area where she worked.
A judge issued an arrest warrant for Fetchel after blood tests linked her to the infant, found two months ago by a custodian, Lt. Tony Kelly said. Authorities allege that Fetchel’s negligence as a parent led to the baby’s death.
Fetchel was arrested at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, shortly after arriving for work at the company’s Buena Park headquarters.
Yamaha’s senior vice president, Roger Stange, said he and fellow employees were shaken when police arrested the Garden Grove woman, who is not married and does not have children.
“I’m 61 years old, and I thought I was through being shocked by anything,” Stange said. “But that’s not true. . . . This kind of thing is enough to shock anybody.”
He declined to reveal any more information about Fetchel’s circumstances, citing the company’s confidentiality regulations.
Employees at Yamaha’s consumer audio section, which oversees distribution of home theater systems, stereo speakers and compact disc players, complained of a foul smell in early June, days before a maintenance worker tracked down the odor and found the tiny body in the cabinet, authorities said at the time.
The infant was wrapped in a towel and placed in a plastic bag along with some women’s clothing, police said.
An autopsy showed the baby was born alive and “lived for a matter of hours,” Kelly said Wednesday. Investigators don’t know how long the body had been inside the cabinet, but estimated one to two weeks.
Fetchel’s father, John Fetchel of Prescott Valley, Ariz., said he “just can’t believe this has happened.”
“She’s so easygoing,” he said Wednesday, after learning about the arrest. “She loves kids. She’s very good-hearted. She has never said a bad thing about anybody her whole life.”
Fetchel said he has seen his daughter a few times since he moved to Arizona late last year, and that she “didn’t show signs of pregnancy” nor did she ever seem upset.
Because the infant was born alive, the death is considered a homicide, police said. Fetchel is being held at the Orange County Women’s Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.
