A woman was arrested at UCLA after she left her child in an apartment with fatal injuries then went to the campus and told people about it, according to Santa Monica police.
The woman, identified in booking records as 24-year-old Carmen Anita DeGregg, was taken into custody and booked into Santa Monica Jail, according to authorities. DeGregg’s bail is set at $2 million.
Around noon Tuesday, UCLA police alerted Santa Monica police that DeGregg claimed “she had harmed her child and left her child inside an apartment,” in their city, police said in a press release. Based on that report, officers headed to an apartment about four miles away at Santa Monica’s The Charlie, a luxury apartment complex in the middle of the city, where the child was discovered with critical injuries.
Paramedics rushed the child to the hospital, where the baby was pronounced dead. According to KTLA, the child was a 15-month-old toddler. Apartment complex residents told KTLA that DeGregg had moved in only a few months prior and that a woman had been heard talking in distress in the apartment earlier in the day.
In a statement, Santa Monica Police officials confirmed that a team of Special Investigations detectives are gathering evidence and investigating the case. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner will determine the exact cause of death.
