Mother of 3-year-old found dead at recycling center feared ex-husband would harm daughter
SAN FRANCISCO — The mother of a 3-year-old girl found at a San Francisco Bay Area recycling center over the weekend said Tuesday she worried about her daughter’s well-being while she was with her ex-husband, who authorities say committed suicide and is suspected in the child’s death.
San Jose police said a worker in the processing area of ââa San Jose recycling plant found the body of Ellie Lorenzo on Saturday. She was last seen alive with her father, Jared Lorenzo, who was embroiled in a bitter custody battle with the child’s mother and died Friday in an apparent suicide in San Francisco. San Jose police said in a statement Tuesday that Lorenzo, 42, is a suspect in the girl’s death.
âEllie was stolen from me, her grandmother, and the rest of our family and friends in a vicious and brutal way,â the childâs mother, Chrystal Obi, said in the statement posted on social media. Obi did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Obi said Lorenzo learned that the court had ordered her to move to another state with her daughter before he picked up the child from her home in Mountain View, California, on Thursday for court-ordered visitation with the child.
Obi said she worried about Ellie’s safety when the child was with her father.
âI desperately wanted her to keep an eye on me at all times and worried about her safety every time she was with him for court-ordered visitation,â she wrote.
The child was last seen alive with Lorenzo on Thursday at a home in Fremont, 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Mountain View, before he drove with the child to his apartment nearby, San Jose police said in a statement. Lorenzo left his apartment at 6 a.m. on Friday “and drove to the city of San Jose where he removed Ellie’s body from the trunk of his vehicle and disposed of her in a dumpster,” police said.
That trash bin was later emptied by the garbage company and Ellie’s body was unknowingly taken to the recycling plant, authorities said.
Obi said she had no doubt that her ex-husband “killed” her and that he did everything he could to cover up his crime. He “moved her to another city, hid her body in a bag in a box in a garbage can and drove to another city to commit suicide,” she wrote.
According to police, after dumping the child’s body, Lorenzo drove to several cities in the Bay Area, stopping in San Francisco, where he was found dead Friday morning, apparently by suicide.
Authorities have not said how Lorenzo or Ellie died. The motive and circumstances surrounding the child’s death are still under investigation, San Jose police said.
Obi had been fighting for sole custody since their marriage broke up in 2021, saying the father was becoming “increasingly erratic” and “increasingly unstable,” according to court records. Mercury News reported.
When Ellie was five months old, Obi accused her husband of âemotional abuseâ and âgaslighting me with excuses that made no sense.â
Lorenzo âwalks around the room talking to himself and becomes increasingly agitated,â she said, and âputs tape over the light switchesâ to keep them on, the newspaper reported.
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In this story the spelling of the mother’s surname is corrected to Obi.