The father of a 3-year-old Fremont girl whose body was found at a recycling plant in San Jose this past weekend has been identified as a suspect in her killing, police said Tuesday.
Ellie Chinaza Obi Lorenzo was reported missing Friday afternoon after her mother heard that her father, Jared Lorenzo, died by suicide in San Francisco.
Fremont police previously said Lorenzo was expected to drop the girl off with her mother later in the day. Her parents divorced in 2021 and had been battling over child custody ever since, according to Santa Clara County court records.
In a Tuesday news release, San Jose police said Ellie was last seen alive with her father at a residence in Fremont on Thursday night. Detectives learned Lorenzo then drove Ellie to his apartment in Fremont. He left his apartment around 6 a.m. Friday and drove to San Jose, where he dumped the girl’s body in a trash receptacle, police said.
The receptacle was later emptied by GreenWaste Recovery Facility and transferred to the company’s Charles Street recycling plant, where Ellie’s body was discovered. Police said they believe Lorenzo then drove to other neighboring cities before stopping in San Francisco, where he was found dead shortly after 11 a.m.
In a statement to reporters, Ellie’s mom, Stanford University radiologist Chrystal Obi, said the family is heartbroken over the loss of “our sweet little Ellie.”
“Ellie was stolen from me, her grandmother, and the rest of our family and friends in an evil and brutal manner,” she wrote. “For years I feared constantly for Ellie’s well-being in the hands of her father, even with his limited access under shared custody. I wanted desperately for her constant supervision and worried for her safety each time she was with him for court-ordered visitation.”
But the courts continued to grant Lorenzo partial and unsupervised custody. Finally, this past week, Obi said a judge gave her permission to move with Ellie out of state.
Two days later, she said she kissed Ellie goodbye at her home in Mountain View, where she lived and attended preschool, said “I love you” and sent her off for a court-ordered visit with Lorenzo.
“But my daughter never returned,” Obi said. “Her father killed her and went to great lengths to cover his crime by moving her to a different city, hiding her body in a bag inside a box inside a dumpster, and driving to another city to take his own life.”
Obi asked for privacy while she mourns Ellie’s loss and said she plans to share more of her story after she has time to grieve.
The motive for the killing is still under investigation. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office has ruled Ellie’s death a homicide and concluded that she died from “craniocerebral injuries due to Blunt head trauma.”
According to his LinkedIn page, Lorenzo recently studied corporate finance as a master’s student at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The university told The Standard that Lorenzo received his degree in spring 2023.