A second defendant was convicted Friday in the 2015 killing of a 3-week-old baby abducted from her home in Long Beach as part of a woman’s bizarre plot to trick her boyfriend into believing she had given birth, officials said.
Several of the infant’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 she had given birth to twins while he was out of the country, according to investigators.
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 shot that baby’s parents and uncle while fleeing, prosecutors said.
De La Cruz was kidnapped on Jan. 3, 2015, and her body was found in a dumpster at a San Diego County strip mall the following day, although 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 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 three years after the violent events unfolded, and McCall and a third defendant still await sentencing. Todd Damon Boudreaux, 46, previously pleaded guilty to one count of being an accessory after the fact in October 2016.
Both McCall and Boudreaux are scheduled to be sentenced on March 19. McCall is facing multiple life sentences, prosecutors said.
D’Milian was sentenced to life in prison in January after pleading no contest to one count first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.