Police Investigating Girl’s Fatal Plunge as Homicide

The death of a 4-year-old Huntington Beach girl, who plunged 300 feet down a cliff at the Palos Verdes Peninsula, is being investigated as a homicide, authorities said Saturday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Martinez said detectives originally thought the Nov. 8 death of Lauren Key-Marer was suspicious. Additional, unspecified information has since been uncovered, authorities said. The child was with her father at the time of the fall.

The father, Cameron Brown, 39, told detectives that he was sitting on the cliff’s edge taking in the ocean view when his restless daughter, who was walking behind him, slipped and fell. Brown told authorities he did not have time to grab her.

Brown “is not a suspect at this time,” said Sgt. Rick Myers, a department spokesman.

Detectives are asking the public to help identify a woman, in her early 30s with blond hair, who may have witnessed the incident at Inspiration Point shortly after 2 p.m. last November, Martinez said.

The woman, who spoke to patrol officers briefly on Nov. 15 after being stopped at a checkpoint, was driving a silver minivan, Martinez said. She had two toddlers in the vehicle, he said.

Investigators have openly expressed surprise that a parent would take a child to such a dangerous place.

“There’s no way in the world I would expect any person to be up here with a child, especially one not under their grasp or control,” Sheriff’s Det. Cameron Smith told The Times shortly after the death. “It’s incredible. Just to get to the trail is enough to make one’s stomach turn.”

Brown told detectives that he and his daughter had walked for more than a mile on a winding trail from a park west of the point because, he said, his daughter liked to hike.