Suspect held in death of 12-year-old Mercedez Layne

A 26-year-old Pa­lo Seco man is in po­lice cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue prob­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne, whose body was dis­cov­ered in Erin on Sun­day morn­ing, just hours af­ter she was re­port­ed miss­ing.

Po­lice say Mer­cedez, of Los Iros Beach Road, Erin, was re­port­ed miss­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 p.m. on Sat­ur­day by her grand­fa­ther, who lives at Loren­sotte North Trace, Ran­cho Que­ma­do.

The child had re­port­ed­ly spent the pre­vi­ous night at her grand­fa­ther’s home.

Around 11.30 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, he placed her in­to a ve­hi­cle that was ex­pect­ed to take her home to Los Iros. How­ev­er, she nev­er ar­rived at her des­ti­na­tion.

Con­cerned rel­a­tives re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion, prompt­ing of­fi­cers to launch an im­me­di­ate miss­ing per­son in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors, led by Sgt Jaglal, car­ried out ex­ten­sive en­quiries through­out the night. Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived and af­ter re­view­ing CCTV footage, of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied the ve­hi­cle in which Mer­cedez had last been seen trav­el­ling.

At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1 am on Sun­day, the ve­hi­cle was found aban­doned along Beach Road in Pa­lo Seco. Po­lice pho­tographed and processed the ve­hi­cle be­fore con­vey­ing it to the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Hours lat­er, around 6.43 am, an em­ploy­ee of an oil com­pa­ny re­port­ed­ly went to in­spect a well along Cara­pal Road, Erin. While trav­el­ling along a well ac­cess road, the work­er dis­cov­ered the body of a young fe­male ly­ing face down.

The dis­cov­ery was im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed to po­lice, who re­spond­ed and lat­er con­firmed that the de­ceased was the miss­ing child.

Se­nior of­fi­cers, along with in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, vis­it­ed the scene and launched ex­ten­sive foren­sic and in­ves­tiga­tive en­quiries.

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­gressed, of­fi­cers de­tained a 26-year-old man from Pa­lo Seco in con­nec­tion with the case. He re­mains in po­lice cus­tody while en­quiries con­tin­ue.