A second defendant from Long Beach California was convicted Friday in the 2015 killing of a 3-week-old baby abducted from her home as part of a woman’s bizarre plot to trick her boyfriend into believing she had given birth, officials said.
Several of the baby’s family members were also left wounded by gunfire when their home was invaded, and another child was nearly swept up in the violence.
A jury found Anthony Ray McCall, 32, guilty on seven felony counts: first-degree murder, kidnapping, attempted kidnapping and four counts of attempted murder, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
The Oceanside resident was involved in an elaborate plot hatched by a woman named Giseleangelique Rene D’Milian, who wanted her married boyfriend to believe that she had given birth to twins while he was out of the country.
After tracking the mother of 3-week-old Eliza De La Cruz to their northern Long Beach residence, D’Milian enlisted McCall to storm the home, where he then shot that baby’s parents and uncle while fleeing, prosecutors said.
Kidnapping
De La Cruz was kidnapped on Jan. 3, 2015, and her body was later found in a dumpster at a San Diego County strip mall, and investigators believe she was killed the same day she was abducted. It is still unclear why she wound up dead.
McCall was also found guilty of beating a 23-year-old woman with a baseball bat as he attempted to kidnap her 4-month-old son from an El Segundo hotel room about a month after De La Cruz’s death.
The baby was reportedly unharmed, and hotel employees were able to thwart the abduction when they knocked on the room’s door, causing McCall to flee.
The conviction comes more than 3 years after the violent events unfolded, and McCall and a third defendant still await sentencing.
Todd Damon Boudreaux, 46, previously pleaded guilty to 1 count of being an accessory after the fact in October 2016.