Ellie Lorenzo, the 3-year-old whose body was found Saturday at a San Jose recycling plant, died from “craniocerebral injuries due to Blunt head trauma,” the Santa Clara County Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner reported.
San Jose police Tuesday identified Ellie’s father, Jared Lorenzo, as a suspect in Ellie’s death. Her mother, Chrystal Obi, reported her missing Friday after learning that Lorenzo had taken his own life Friday morning.
San Francisco police would confirm only that Lorenzo died in San Francisco and that no foul play is suspected. KTVU-TV reported that the manager of a barber shop on O’Farrell Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District said she heard him hit the ground and found his body just outside her shop’s door.
Family court records reviewed by the Bay Area News Group show Obi had fought for sole custody of Ellie since her marriage to Lorenzo broke up in 2021, saying he was “increasingly erratic” and had become “progressively unstable.”
San Jose Police said Tuesday that Lorenzo last was seen with his daughter Thursday evening at a residence in Fremont before driving to his own apartment nearby. On Friday, Lorenzo left his apartment at 6 a.m., police said, “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 trash receptacle.”
That trash bin later was emptied by the garbage company, and Ellie’s body was unknowingly transferred to GreenWaste recycling, off Gish Road in San Jose. San Jose police as of Tuesday had not reported how the girl died.
Obi in a statement Tuesday said that she had no doubt that her ex-husband “murdered” Ellie and that Lorenzo “went to great lengths to cover his crime” by “hiding her body in a bag inside a box inside a dumpster and driving to another city to take his own life.”