Mother arrested 37 years after her newborn was found dead in dumpster: Police
(NEW YORK) — A woman has been arrested for the murder of her newborn 37 years after the baby girl was found dead in a dumpster in California, authorities said.
On Oct. 13, 1987, a man rummaging for recyclables found a dead newborn in a dumpster behind a business, Riverside police said.
Authorities believe the baby was born within hours of being abandoned, police said. The baby girl’s death was ruled a homicide, police said.
Decades went by without answers.
In 2020, police said the case was reopened, and investigators joined forces with Othram labs to try to solve the case with DNA technology.
Forensic evidence was submitted to Othram in 2021 and scientists used that evidence to build a DNA profile for the unnamed baby, according to Othram.
Riverside police then turned to forensic genetic genealogy, in which unknown DNA is identified by comparing it to family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a database, Othram said.
The forensic genetic genealogy investigation led authorities to potential relatives of the unknown baby, Othram said.
Authorities said they identified the suspect as 55-year-old Melissa Jean Allen Avila, who was 19 at the time of the newborn’s death.
A motive is not known, police said.
Avila was arrested in North Carolina and extradited to Riverside County, California, police said. She was booked for first-degree murder on Aug. 5, police said.
“Detectives have no reason to believe the baby’s father had any criminal culpability in the murder,” police added.
Avila’s arraignment is set for Sept. 9.
Riverside police stressed that California’s Safe Arms for Newborns law — enacted in 2001 — allows a parent to leave a baby three days old or younger at a fire station or hospital emergency room.
“If the baby has not been abused or neglected, the person may surrender it without fear of arrest or prosecution for child abandonment,” police said.
(NEW YORK) — A change in the nation’s political landscape means the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case should be recused, defense attorneys argued in a court filing made public Thursday.
Trump is reviving a longshot effort to have Judge Juan Merchan recused from the case because of an alleged conflict between the judge’s daughter and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
“Your Honor’s daughter has a long-standing relationship with Harris, including work for political campaigns. She has obtained — and stands to obtain in the future — extensive financial, professional, and personal benefits from her relationship with Harris,” defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.
Describing the vice president as Trump’s “presumptive opponent,” defense lawyers argued that Merchan’s daughter has had an “extremely beneficial working relationship” with Harris because her company was a top vendor to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign.
This is the third time Trump’s lawyers have attempted to have Judge Merchan removed from the case. Last year, New York’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics determined that Merchan’s impartiality “cannot reasonably be questioned” based on his daughter’s professional work as a political consultant.
When Trump renewed his motion earlier this year, Merchan determined that defense lawyers failed to prove a conflict, describing their motion as a “series of inferences, innuendos and unsupported speculation.”
In a separate filing made public Thursday, Trump’s lawyers reiterated their argument that the case should be dismissed based on the Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling that Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
Last week, prosecutors pushed back against the motion by arguing that Trump’s conduct was “entirely personal” with “no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”
Defense lawyers responded by arguing that the introduction of evidence related to official acts at trial caused an irreparable harm that merits the case be dismissed.
“In this case, a politically motivated district attorney violated that immunity by using official-acts evidence in grand jury proceedings and at trial. Therefore, the case must be dismissed, and the jury’s verdicts must be vacated,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Judge Merchan last month postponed Trump’s July 11 sentencing to Sept. 18 so he can consider Trump’s request to toss his conviction based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — San Francisco 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall, who was shot Saturday in a brazen broad daylight attempted robbery in San Francisco’s Union Square, was released from the hospital on Sunday and “extremely lucky” to be alive, his mother and the 49ers said on social media.
Pearsall, 23, “sustained a bullet wound to his chest,” the San Francisco 49ers said in a statement.
The NFL team said Pearsall was released from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Sunday afternoon as he “continues to recover” from the shooting.
“He and his family, along with the entire San Francisco 49ers organization, would like to thank the San Francisco Police Department, emergency medical services, doctors and staff at San Francisco General Hospital,” the team said in a statement posted on X.
Pearsall’s mother, Erin Pearsall, posted a statement on Facebook Sunday, saying, “I want to thank GOD for protecting my baby boy.”
“He is extremely lucky, GOD shielded him,” she wrote in the post that was shared on social media by her son’s 49er teammates, including quarterback Brock Purdy. “He was shot in the chest and it exited out his back. Thanks be to GOD it missed his vital organs.”
Shortly before 4 p.m. local time Saturday, police responded to a report of a shooting and found two men “suffering from injuries,” San Francisco Police Department said in a statement.
“During the attempted robbery, a physical altercation ensued, and both the suspect and victim were injured,” according to SFPD.
Preliminary information indicates the wide receiver was targeted for a Rolex watch he was wearing, sources confirmed to ABC News.
Pearsall was walking along a street when a 17-year-old suspect from Tracy, California, approached and tried to rob him, police said during a briefing outside of San Francisco General Hospital.
Police said Pearsall was not targeted because he is a football player, it was a random street robbery.
The suspect is in custody and charges are pending at this time, police said in a statement.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told a press conference that the investigation into the incident was still active.
“This kind of violence is simply unacceptable in our city, and we will do everything in our power to work with District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to assure that justice is served in this matter,” he said.
Asked whether the suspect had accomplices, Scott replied: “Right now, we believe it was one lone person. That may change as we get video evidence.”
Jenkins told the press conference that she expected to make a charging decision “by the middle of next week, either Tuesday or Wednesday.” Any charges will be filed in a juvenile court given the suspect’s age, Jenkins added.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, meanwhile, described the incident as “terrible and rare.”
Pearsall — a first-round draft pick — had been dealing with a shoulder injury during the preseason and returned to practice last week, according to the National Football League.
“He is in good spirits right now,” Erin Pearsall said in her Facebook post. “Life is so precious my friends. Please love each other. My son was spared today by the grace of God. Please pray for my baby.”
ABC News’ Erica Morris and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for the Southern California city of Rancho Palos Verdes, where a landslide has threatened homes and caused the local utility provider to cut off electricity and gas to 245 residences due to broken pipes and power lines causing hazards.
On Tuesday afternoon, Newsom issued the declaration for the Los Angeles city community after local elected leaders held a news conference over the weekend and repeated their request that he act.
The governor said in a statement that the city is located on four out of five sub-slides that comprise the Greater Portuguese Landslide Complex. He said land movement in parts of the complex has “significantly accelerated following severe storms in 2023 and 2024.”
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it has been coordinating with the city and county for nearly a year to support the response to the landslide, including providing technical assistance, supporting the local assistance center, facilitating a federal mitigation grant for groundwater work in the area and helping officials with initial damage estimates.
The governor’s decision came just hours before residents and local leaders held a meeting to discuss the growing crisis with utility officials.
“We can not predict how much the slide will accelerate in the coming weeks and months,” Larry Chung, vice president of Southern California Edison (SCE), said during the meeting Tuesday evening.
Residents in the growing landslide zone, which has spread about 680 acres over the past year, have been advised to leave the area after SCE shut off power to 245 homes on Sunday and Monday and said many of them will be without electricity and gas indefinitely.
Chung maintained during the meeting that there is “no timeframe” for power restoration in the impacted areas due to the instability of the land.
“The safety of the community members and crews remains our highest priority,” he added.
In January, Sallie Reeves told ABC News that she began noticing little cracks in the walls and floors of her Rancho Palos Verdes home of four decades. But by Tuesday, those cracks had turned into a widening fissure running through her home, wrecking room after room as the earth has been moving under her house at what she estimates is 12 inches a week.
Like Reeves, residents in the oceanfront community have been coping with a landslide crisis that is making their homes uninhabitable.
“This just kept getting worse, and we had animals coming in,” the 81-year-old Reeves told ABC News, pointing to where her home has split in half, exposing her master bedroom to the outdoors.
“This has been a hard pill to swallow,” Reeves told ABC News, adding that her husband is disabled.
She said she and her husband have had to move out of their master bedroom after damage to their roof caused a leak so bad she said it was as if “someone just turned a hose on our bed.”
Over the last four months, she said things have worsened as parts of her ceiling have collapsed, and a space between her outdoor deck and home has widened to about 18 inches. Reeves said she and her husband began sleeping in their living room until the landslide made it uninhabitable. She said now they’ve moved to a rear bedroom.
Rancho Palos Verdes is located about 30 miles south of Los Angeles.
“There is no playbook for an emergency like this one,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who represents the area, said at a news conference Sunday. “We’re sparing no expense. This is bigger than Rancho Palos Verdes. This land movement is so gigantic and so damaging that one city should not have to bear the burden alone.”
Hahn said the county has committed $5 million to respond to the disaster.
Officials said the shifting land has caused water and gas pipes to leak, and the city has been forced to red-tag at least two homes made uninhabitable by damage.
“Yes, this landslide has been moving for decades, but the acceleration that’s happening currently is beyond what any of us could have foretold, and it demands more response from the state, more response from the federal government,” Hahn said.
Evacuation warnings have been issued for part of the city. However, residents like Reeves said they are not leaving their homes.
“When people say, ‘Why don’t you just go someplace?’ I can’t take him just someplace,” Reeves said of her disabled husband, who is also in his 80s. “I can’t go to a hotel. He can’t get in the beds. I’m his 24-hour care.”
Reeves said she is working with a contractor on plans to lift her home and build a steel foundation that will sit on cribbing, repairs she expects will be out-of-pocket expenses.
“I would be thrilled to show Gavin Newsom my house because I’m not the only one that lives like this,” Reeves said. “This is what Mother Nature is doing.”