Giselle Marie Sanchez was a baby, less than a year old, when she died on Monday, November 22, 2010. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after sustaining blunt force trauma. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau case.
She was a Latina infant. The Los Angeles Times record lists her age as zero, which means she had not yet reached her first birthday. Unlike most entries in the Times Homicide Report, hers gives no address, block or neighborhood, so it is not even publicly known in which community of Los Angeles County she died.
Beyond her name and her age, almost nothing about Giselle has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have reported on her death. Giselle and Sanchez are both common names, and searches turned up only other people, among them adult women named Giselle Sanchez who organized fundraisers for relatives, a researcher, and a Florida teenager with a similar name who died in 2012. None of them is the baby who died in 2010.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances of her death remain unknown to the public. The record does not say how she was hurt, who was caring for her at the time, whether she died at home or at a hospital, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect. When a baby dies of blunt force trauma, investigators usually look closely at everyone who was responsible for the child in the hours and days before, but no public report shows what detectives in this case learned.
Her short life left little trace in the public record, but she had parents and very likely grandparents, aunts, uncles or siblings who remember her. Someone chose her name, Giselle Marie, and someone held her and cared for her in the months she was alive. The absence of any public mourning does not mean she was not loved. It only means that the people who knew her have not shared their memories online.
The Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau handles deaths in the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County and in the many cities that contract with the department for police services, from the Antelope Valley in the north to communities in the southeast and the San Gabriel Valley. Cases involving infants may also draw in child abuse investigators and the county's child welfare agency as well, but none of that work has been made public here.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest. Deaths of very young children are among the hardest cases for investigators, because the victims cannot speak and the only witnesses are often the adults in the home.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Giselle Marie Sanchez could be found in news archives or public records. More than 15 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a baby girl named Giselle Marie Sanchez in Los Angeles County in the fall of 2010, or who knew the family she lived with, may hold information that could help detectives. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
