This Tuesday, a woman got fatally stabbed in her apartment and had her infant child got taken away. Two days later, thanks to police efforts and the neighborhood’s immigrant community’s cooperation, the missing six-week-old was found.
Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez, 28, recently had a miscarriage, which she attempted to hide from her boyfriend. She was friends with the brother of Carolina Miranda Flores, 33, and she caught wind that Flores recently gave birth.
“This woman [Jisela] was due to have a baby [this] January and she lost that baby,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said during a press conference today. “She continued to fake her pregnancy with loved ones and then at some point, actually on December 19th, she went to the home of our victim and brutalized her and murdered her.”
The victim’s body, which had multiple stab wounds, was found by a family member. She was lying dead on the floor of her northeast Houston apartment, and her infant daughter, Shamali, was nowhere to be found.
Police set out their rapid child response abduction team, scouring the neighborhood with black hounds and issuing an amber alert. They asked the public to be on the lookout for a woman who might be trying to pass the baby as her own.
Acevedo praised the community for having come forward to share information to help in the suspect’s arrest. Since it was a neighborhood with many immigrants, police stressed their immigrant status would not be put in danger, and they could share information anonymously with police.
“Everything that our outstanding investigators theorized turned out to be true, but a big part of that relied on community policing, community trust. Because a lot of those early interviews we did in that (apartment) complex helped clue us in on what we were dealing with,” the Police Chief said.
“We want to make sure that people understand that our one focus… our only goal is to bring justice to this family and that baby back to where [she] belongs,” said Acevedo. “We’re not interested in anybody’s immigration status.”
Miranda Flores was an undocumented immigrant herself, according to her cousin. Despite showing no signs of abuse or injury, the baby was taken to the Texas Children’s Hospital for a full checkup as a precautionary measure. She is healthy, and currently in Child Protective Services’ custody.
This article was inspired by ABC NEWS // Woman who recently had miscarriage charged with killing a mother: Police