KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The identity of a baby’s body found in a wooded area of Kansas City has been released.
Kansas City police said the baby’s name is Kha’liya Bridgewater. She was born in November, six months before investigators found her body near East 41st Street and Pittman Road in May.
The cause and manner of her death are still under investigation, according to police.
Teddy bears and stuffed animals sit at a memorial for the six-month-old in the same place where police found her body.
It’s a place her grandfather Marty Lammers hasn’t visited yet.
“I would say that I’m probably happy I’m in Texas and not in Missouri right now,” Lammers said.
Lammers said he’s father of the baby’s mother and hasn’t spoken to his daughter since this all happened.
“You don’t do this to a six-month-old baby. I was a single dad for many years with five kids. I gave it my all to raise my kids,” Lammers said. “So if she has a part of it — and I can’t sit here and say she did or she didn’t — I’m like everybody else. I have to go off the facts coming from the detectives.”
No charges have been filed at this time in the child’s death or the case in general.
Lammers talked about the possibility that an abusive partner participated in the death at the mother’s apartment, which has since been combed over by police, according to a search warrant.
Lammers said he will push his daughter to turn herself in if it comes to that and that he’s disturbed by what happened to his granddaughter.
“She was always smiling, doing her little cooing and stuff. She got the smile and the eyes that just melt the soul,” Lammer said of his granddaughter.
Members of the family said they’re planning a balloon release on Pittman Road at 8 p.m. Friday. Lammers has set up a GoFundMe page to help with funeral arrangements.
Detectives used DNA to identify Kha’liya’s parents.
According to court documents, family members said Kha’liya’s mother told them the baby died. Family members contacted police after the woman wouldn’t give them information about how Kha’liya died or when she would be buried.
A search warrant shows detectives compared DNA from the baby’s remains to the DNA of the child’s suspected mother. Tests show the woman is likely the baby’s mother.
It also shows the woman’s sibling and a friend went to her apartment on April 28. They said the apartment “smelled horrific,” and there were trash bags left near the front door.
The woman allegedly told her sibling that the 6-month-old baby was not at the apartment.
Based on the investigation, Kansas City police questioned the woman. The court paperwork shows she told officers she had two children, a 4-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter, but denied having a third child.
The court document also shows that the woman changed her story several times before saying her boyfriend strapped Kha’liya’s body into a car seat and disappeared. He told her he was going to Arkansas, but to tell people he took the baby to Texas.
No one is charged in the baby’s death yet, so FOX4 isn’t identifying anyone listed in the search warrants pending formal charges.
