Police in Los Angeles confirmed that the death of an infant, who was discovered on Monday on the shoulder of an LA freeway with another child, was connected to two other deaths that occurred that same morning, CBS News reported.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that California Highway Patrol officers discovered a 9-year-old girl and an infant girl along the side of Interstate 405 just 10 miles west of downtown LA in Culver City at about 4:30 a.m. on April 8. Both children were suffering from injuries.
According to Highway Patrol Officer Frank Salas, the 9-year-old was hospitalized but the infant, believed to be roughly six months old, died at the scene.
A person reported seeing a black sedan near where the two girls were found. However, Officer Salas said at the time that it was unclear if the children had been in the vehicle
At around 7:30 a.m., Los Angeles police and paramedics responded to a Woodland Hills apartment after a caller reported that a man in his thirties was unresponsive. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Later on Monday, police said they were investigating a single-vehicle crash involving a black sedan that occurred around 5:00 a.m. in Redondo Beach. The female driver was killed in the crash.
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that detectives along with the California Highway Patrol were looking into whether the abandoned children were connected to the “homicide scene” in Woodland Hills.
LAPD detectives were also working with detectives from the Redondo Beach Police Department to find out if the single-vehicle car crash was also connected to the other incidents.
In an April 9 statement, the California Highway Patrol confirmed that all three cases were linked and the suspect in the death of the man and the infant was the children’s mother, 34-year-old Danielle Cherakiya Johnson, CBS News reported.
According to the statement, Johnson is suspected of killing her boyfriend in Woodland Hills and then fleeing the scene with their children in a Porsche Cayenne. While on I-405, the children were either pushed or fell out of the moving vehicle while Johnson continued driving, eventually crashing her vehicle in Redondo Beach.
LAPD homicide detectives identified the first victim as Jaelen Allen Chaney, 29.
