California police are searching for the body of a missing 3-week-old boy in a landfill area in Los Angeles County, authorities said Tuesday night. The baby’s parents, who share three other children, have been arrested in Utah on charges unrelated to the missing infant.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detectives have been looking for the remains of the baby among the trash at the Antelope Valley Landfill, some 70 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles.
Baki Dewees, the son of 24-year-old Yusuf Dewees and 25-year-old Roselani Gaoa, was born on April 14 and last seen on May 3 in Palmdale, Calif. according to a statement shared by the family on social media.
“His dad took him out of his grandmother’s home & that was the last time anyone in my family saw him,” the baby’s great-aunt, Sofia Paulo, wrote on Facebook on May 9.
“[We are] desperately asking for your help,” Paulo added. “Baki is only 3 weeks old. Please help us bring Baki home to his grandmother.”
Brad Parke, Paulo’s longtime boyfriend, told Fox 11 Los Angeles that nothing seemed unusual when the couple left Palmdale.
“[The baby’s father] didn’t say nothing,” Parke said. “They went to the Greyhound [and when he got to the bus station], he didn’t have the baby with him.”
“When the baby came up missing, that’s when you know something is wrong,” Parke told NBC Los Angeles.
Late on Tuesday, Lt. Omar Camacho told local media that authorities were no longer investigating the baby’s disappearance as a “missing infant’ case, but as a death investigation.
“We’re searching [the landfill] based on where the investigation has taken us, and unfortunately we weren’t able to find anything today,” Camacho told the Los Angeles Times.
Two days after giving birth to baby Baki, his mother was arrested in Ogden, Utah on suspicion of aggravated child abuse, intentional child abuse and reckless child abuse, jail records show — charges not related to the disappearance of the newborn baby.
One law enforcement source told the Times the victim is Baki’s older sister.
After Gaoa’s arrest, the father left Utah and took the couple’s three other children back to California.
He reportedly returned to Ogden a few days later, likely to talk to authorities about the case.
Dewees was arrested on May 7 on suspicion of obstruction of justice and making a false statement, arrest records show.
