Unborn Child Killed in South LA Double ‘Cold Case' Murder

It's been five years since "Baby Girl Garcia," as LAPD calls her, died. And to date, the man who pulled the trigger and ended her life before it even started, remains on the run.

Baby Garcia died as a result of a shooting in Watts that also killed a 45-year-old man sitting on his porch.

"I thank Jehovah so many times before my son left here, my son knew he was loved," Loraine Reeves says as she thinks back to that August day in 2010. Even now she refers to her son, Ronald Reeves, like he's just a boy. But the man, "Ron Ron" stood six-foot-five and weighed 280 pounds. His mother believes he was trying to help when those shots rang out near 97th and Holmes.

"He was sitting on the porch, minding his own business," Reeves says, trying to control her emotions, "I heard this rapid sound - pop pop pop pop pop! I started screaming come in the house!"

LAPD South Bureau's elite Criminal Gang Homicide Division has been investigating the case since the day it happened. Five years later, it's considered a "cold case," and Detective Michael Levant is at the helm.

"Trying to investigate murders in this neighborhood is trying to overcome the reluctance of snitching and to build trust with people that we're here for them," Det. Levant says, "and we're going to see it through throughout the entire investigation."

Levant says the 19-year-old pregnant woman was with a friend in the street talking, when they noticed a suspicious car approach. They happened to be standing outside Reeves' home.

"As they were waiting outside, a male approached them and engaged them in conversation," he says, "and as they were standing there talking, they saw a car pass by a couple times with its lights off."

Levant says when the car stopped, one man exited with a high-powered weapon and started shooting.

"The girls ran to the house," he says, "hit by gunfire as well as the man on the porch."

In the head, 4 people had been shot: Ronald Reeves died, the pregnant woman lost her baby because of the amount of blood loss, and two others had minor wounds.

"When all the bullets stopped flying," recalled Ms. Reeves, "that little girl, she was shot in the back. She started screaming my baby! My baby!"

It was that moment when Reeves says she looked down and saw her son.

"And I asked him the dumbest question in the whole wide world. I said, what are you doin' down there? He said, I'm hit Momma."

Police soon arrived and took her son away. Reeves remembers the moment he was pronounced dead.

"At 1:40, that was it. Just like that. He was gone," she says.

Det. Levant says because of the gang mentality in this part of Watts, the young woman who lost her baby has been uncooperative with the investigation, including declining to be interviewed for this report. He chalks it up to fear of retaliation.

"They feel like if they talk to the police, that's a bad thing to do and they may be retaliated against for doing so," he says, "By that mentality, the street mentality, it's one of the worst things you can do, is be a snitch. To even tell her story about what happened to her including the loss of her baby, the snitching component overrides everything."

And yet investigators press on. Reeves is thankful for that.

"I bet you there's somebody that knows him," she says of the shooter, "And if I had a friend that did something like that, I don't care if it was my son, I would tell somebody."

Investigators are hoping for someone to come forward with information. They've set up a special hotline to reach them directly at 323-786-5110. Any tips can be submitted anonymously.

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