San Jose police still seeking answers in apparent murder of 3-year-old found at recycling plant

SAN JOSE — The search for 3-year-old Ellie Lorenzo began Friday after her mother received a chilling notice: Ellie’s father, who was supposed to return the girl to her mother that evening under their court ordered custody arrangement, had died of an apparent suicide in San Francisco.

Where, then, was Ellie?

The next morning, at around 4:38 a.m. Saturday, an employee of a San Jose recycling plant called police with a horrific answer. The body of a little girl had been found where the bottles, cans and other recycling materials were processed at the GreenWaste plant off Gish Road.

During a news conference Monday, San Jose Police Sgt. Jorge Garibay could offer little more about the tragedy than was revealed over the weekend.

There was no obvious cause of her death when she was found, Garibay said, but they are investigating it as a homicide. They still are determining whether the father, Jared Lorenzo, was responsible, he said.

Police are confident the death is an isolated incident, he said, and “don’t believe that there’s a public safety threat.”

The Santa Clara County coroner positively identified her body Monday afternoon.

Ellie’s mother didn’t attend the police news conference and through a friend declined to comment Monday as the investigation continued.

Court records show that Ellie’s parents had split up and that the court was resolving their arrangements for her custody, with a custody settlement conference scheduled for July 18.

Ellie was last seen around 6 p.m. Thursday at the Casa Arroyo Apartments in Fremont where her father lived. According to the custody agreement, Ellie’s father was supposed to return her Friday night. But when Ellie’s mother received the news early that day about Lorenzo’s apparent suicide, she filed a missing person’s report for her daughter at 12:25 p.m.

“We’re trying to comb through how it occurred, why it occurred and where it actually occurred,” Garibay said, “because at this point in time, we were not 100% sure.”

San Francisco Police didn’t immediately respond to inquiries about the details surrounding the father’s apparent suicide.

“We always want to figure out, why did this happen? Could we have done something to avoid it?” Garibay said. “But in this case, we’ll never make sense of it. The tragic loss of 3-year-old will never make sense.”