Body in pond next to interstate ID’d as 1-year-old girl of murdered woman
LATEST: The Lake County Coroner’s Office by July 5, 2022, had not responded to News 8’s request for the identity of the child who died.
HAMMOND, Ind. (WISH) — The body of a 1-year-old child pulled Thursday afternoon from a pond at an interstate interchange in northwest Indiana is the daughter of a woman believed to have been murdered in suburban Chicago, police say.
Investigators in Wheeling, Illinois, had been searching for Jaclyn “Angel” Dobbs, of Deerfield, Illinois. Her mother, Ja’nya Murphy, 21, was found strangled to death Tuesday night in what police believe was a murder in her apartment in Wheeling. The Chicago suburb is about 25 miles northwest of downtown.
A construction worker driving in the area Thursday called 911 to report seeing a body floating on the pond on the southwest loop of the interchange for I-80/I-94 at Kennedy Avenue, said Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield in an afternoon news conference at a hotel near the interstate interchange. Police closed off the exit while members of the Hammond Fire Department recovered the girl’s body and investigators searched the area for evidence.
The pond is about 2 miles east of the Illinois-Indiana state line.
The Lake County Coroner’s Office will resume its autopsy Friday to determine the girl’s cause of death.
