Missing 1-year-old found dead in Indiana pond after mom’s death in Illinois, cops say
A 1-year-old girl missing since her mother’s death earlier in the week was discovered dead Nov. 11, Indiana police told media outlets.
The body of Jaclyn “Angel” Dobbs was found floating in a retention pond in Lake County, according to WLS. The pond sits off an interstate exit ramp in northwest Indiana, the TV station reported.
The pond where construction workers found Angel’s body is only four or five feet deep, according to WBBM. A cause of death has not been determined and an autopsy is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 12, WBBM reported.
Lake County is about 75 miles southeast of Wheeling, Illinois, a Chicago suburb where Angel’s mother was found dead in her apartment Nov. 9, McClatchy News reported. Officers checked on 21-year-old Ja’nya Murphy after she had not been in contact with family, then found she “had apparently been murdered.”
Murphy’s death has been ruled a homicide after a medical examiner determined she was strangled, according to The Daily Herald.
Angel was missing from the home and Murphy’s 2020 Dodge Grand Caravan was later found in Missouri, police said. A person of interest, who Wheeling police say “had a previous relationship” with Murphy, was also located in western Missouri and was reportedly being questioned.
The person of interest is not Angel’s father, nor did he live with Murphy, according to the Daily Herald. On Nov. 8, the person of interest and Murphy were seen together at a mall, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“We know for a fact he was in the far northern suburbs (of Chicago) yesterday morning and then by yesterday evening, he was in western Missouri,” Wheeling Police Deputy Chief Al Steffen said Nov. 11, according to WLS. “We are looking to recreate the track from where he was in the northwest suburbs to Missouri.”
Murphy graduated in 2018 from Stevenson High School, just north of Wheeling, and lived with her daughter, police said.
Brently Wright, a friend of Murphy’s, described her as “one of the sweetest people you could meet, a loving and caring person,” McClatchy News reported.
