The relatives who had been raising the infant said they returned her to her mother hours before she was found in a trash bin.
LOS ANGELES, Ca. — For most of her four months, the baby known to her family as Luna was cared for by Herman Johnson and Laura Lacy. On Sept. 28, they said, Luna’s 19-year-old mother asked to have her daughter with her. The couple brought the infant over. By that night, the baby had been found critically injured in a South Los Angeles trash bin.
The handoff has become a central point in the timeline surrounding Luna’s death and the prosecution of her mother, Takiyah Rochelle Babers. Johnson and Lacy have said in interviews that Babers, their foster daughter, had struggled with caring for the infant, leading them to take on most of Luna’s daily care. Police later arrested Babers, and prosecutors charged her with murder and felony assault on a child causing death. The Los Angeles County medical examiner subsequently determined that Luna died from blunt trauma and classified the death as a homicide.
Before any of those findings were public, however, Johnson and Lacy said their first concern was simply figuring out where their granddaughter was. They had dropped the baby off with Babers during the evening. Hours later, news reports began circulating about an unidentified 4-month-old girl found in a trash container near the Pueblo del Rio housing complex. The relatives told local stations that a distinctive detail in the coverage seized their attention: The unidentified baby had six toes on one foot. Luna had the same feature.
The couple said they immediately tried to confirm Luna was safe. Their accounts describe a series of explanations they found increasingly difficult to believe. They said Babers initially told them the child was sleeping, then indicated Luna was with her biological father. FOX 11 reported that Babers also showed family members a phone video that she allegedly presented as current. Relatives said details in the recording made them believe it had been made earlier. Their suspicions deepened, and they began sharing information and photographs with police.
Only then did the grim discovery reported hours earlier become inseparable from the family’s search. Around 10:30 p.m. Sept. 28, a woman near the 5200 block of Alba Street had noticed a bag in a trash bin. She told reporters she used her phone light to look inside and at first thought she was seeing a doll. She soon realized it was a baby. A 911 call brought Los Angeles police officers and Fire Department personnel to the scene. The infant was unresponsive and was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The LAPD Juvenile Division’s Abused Child Section took over the case. On Sept. 29, police announced that detectives had identified Babers as a suspect and arrested her without incident. The department identified Babers as the biological mother of the victim and booked her on suspicion of murder. At that point, police had not released a cause of death or a motive. They said the case would be sent to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to determine what criminal charges, if any, should be filed.
The charging decision followed quickly. Prosecutors filed one count of murder and one felony count of assault on a child causing death against Babers. Medical examiner records later provided another significant piece of the case by identifying the infant as Luna Babers, 4 months and 3 days old, and determining that blunt trauma caused her death. The manner of death was listed as homicide. Those findings establish the medical circumstances of the baby’s death but do not determine who is legally responsible. Babers remains presumed innocent unless the prosecution proves its case.
For Johnson and Lacy, the legal case unfolded against a much more personal history. Lacy said she had taken Babers in as a foster child when Babers was young and later raised her. When Babers had Luna, the older couple again assumed a caregiving role, this time for the infant. Johnson told reporters that they fed the baby and handled her routine needs. Their account depicts Luna not as an occasional visitor but as a child woven into their household. The Sept. 28 request to return the baby to her mother was therefore not simply a transfer between distant relatives but a break from the baby’s usual caregiving arrangement.
That background also explains why the six-toe detail became so important. Police initially had an unidentified infant and a crime scene. Johnson and Lacy had a missing granddaughter with an uncommon physical characteristic. The overlap helped connect the two threads. Local reporting says the family provided photographs, while witnesses and police worked to establish the baby’s identity. The detail that drew widespread attention was not evidence of how Luna died, but it appears to have helped relatives recognize that the unidentified child being reported on television could be the baby they had been raising.
Investigators also obtained evidence beyond the family’s identification, according to later reporting. Najee Ali, who spoke publicly as an advocate for Johnson and Lacy, told the Los Angeles Times that security video showed Babers disposing of the baby’s body in the trash container. He also described residential camera footage from around the time Luna was brought to Babers. A law enforcement source told the newspaper that Ali’s account was accurate. The recordings themselves have not been fully presented in open court, so their precise meaning and context remain subject to the legal process.
The case prompted a community memorial near the trash bin where Luna was found. Candles, flowers and balloons were placed at the location as relatives and neighbors gathered to remember her. The public mourning also underscored an unusual contrast in the story: Police had first encountered Luna as an unidentified child in a trash container, but her family described a baby who had spent her days being fed, held and cared for in their home. Their grief has centered not only on the death but also on the abruptness with which their routine life with the infant ended.
Some relatives have publicly said they believe the killing was intentional or planned, but authorities have not announced a motive in the reliable reporting reviewed for this article. Those family statements should not be treated as official findings. Prosecutors will have to establish the required mental state for the charges through admissible evidence. It also remains unclear from public records precisely when Luna suffered the fatal trauma, what happened inside the residence before her body was taken outside, and whether investigators have developed evidence answering those questions.
For Johnson and Lacy, the prosecution follows a loss that began with what they described as an ordinary decision to let Luna spend time with her mother. Their accounts helped authorities identify the baby, but the questions they have raised about what happened afterward remain questions for evidence and the courts. Babers has been charged but not convicted, and reliable reporting reviewed through Nov. 10 does not confirm what occurred at the court appearance previously scheduled for Oct. 30.
Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.