A 9-year-old found injured and a 6-month-old dead along the side of a freeway near Los Angeles on Monday are believed to be connected to the deaths of a man and a woman in what appears to be a domestic violence incident, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Officers came upon the two girls around 4:30 a.m. along the side of Interstate 405 in Culver City. Culver City is about 10 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
The infant had died at the scene and the 9-year-old was said to have “moderate injuries,” according to California Highway Patrol Officer Frank Salas.
As they were transporting the child to the hospital and working the crime scene, Los Angeles police responded shortly after 5 a.m. to reports of a single-vehicle crash in Redondo Beach, about 20 miles southwest of downtown LA. Law enforcement authorities found a woman dead in the driver’s seat of a black sedan, The Washington Post reported.
Witnesses told police they had seen a black sedan in the area where the girls were later found on the interstate.
About two hours later, police were called to an apartment in the Woodland Hills neighborhood 25 miles northwest of downtown L.A. following a report of an unresponsive man in his 30s.
Police say they found a man — 29-year-old Jaelen Allen Chaney — at the scene, and paramedics pronounced him dead. He had been stabbed, according to police.
According to neighbors at the Montecito Apartments, the couple had a volatile relationship and had fought before the woman left with the children sometime before dawn, KCAL-TV reported.
One witness, a 26-year-old woman, told KCAL, “There was blood on the floor leading into their apartment and then a trail of it in the hallway leading up to the elevator, and I saw some blood on the walls.” She said she told her father, who called 911. He went into the apartment and found a man face down on the floor.
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed Monday afternoon that its detectives were “working with the California Highway Patrol on the incident involving the two children and believe it is connected to the homicide scene” at the apartment complex.
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