Toddler’s Body Found Inside Van
The body of a 22-month-old boy was found in a duffel bag in his father’s van near the City of Industry on Wednesday, a day after the father picked him up to go shopping for clothes, authorities said.
Police were questioning Anthony Bill Lopez, 35, who on Tuesday had gone to the toddler’s home in Lancaster to take him to Los Angeles.
Early Wednesday, the boy’s mother reported to authorities that the pair had not returned.
About the same time a friend of Lopez phoned authorities to say he had been acting despondent and had said his son was dead after bringing the boy to the Los Angeles area, police said. After the boy was reported missing, law enforcement agencies throughout Southern California were notified to be on the lookout for the father and son in Lopez’s 1991 Plymouth Voyager, Sgt. Rick Myers said.
About 2 p.m., a deputy patrolling unincorporated Bassett spotted the van in the parking lot of Bassett Park in the 400 block of Vineland Avenue. Myers said Lopez was in or near the vehicle and was taken into custody without incident.
Investigators were interviewing Lopez, believed to be a resident of Iowa, “to determine what charges should be filed, if any,” Myers said. The coroner’s office is conducting an autopsy to determine how the boy died.
Lopez was estranged from the boy’s mother, whose name was not released.
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