A woman is facing a murder charge after being arrested by Los Angeles police in connection with a body found inside a burned Honda Civic in South Los Angeles, police said.
Sandra Romo Diaz, 52, of Los Angeles was arrested by Los Angeles Police Department detectives in connection with the death of Soledad Lopez, whose body was found in the car Sept. 9.
Detectives arrested Romo Diaz on Sept. 16, and two days later, county prosecutors charged Romo with murder. She has pleaded not guilty.
According to the murder charge, Romo Diaz is accused of killing Lopez on Sept. 7.
Lopez’s body was found in South Los Angeles after family members filed a missing persons report and reportedly tracked her to a scorched Honda Civic that was being held at a tow yard on West Gage Avenue.
The car had been towed to the lot on Sept. 8 from the 6800 block of South Flower Street, according to records. L.A. City firefighters extinguished the vehicle fire but did not check inside the car and did not see the woman’s remains, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
The tow yard operator called the LAPD when family members arrived and said they wanted to look in the car, so Missing Persons Unit investigators rushed to the scene and found the woman’s partially burned body in the trunk on Sept. 9, according to police.
After serving search warrants at multiple locations on Sept. 16, they arrested Romo Diaz in the killing, police said.
During her arraignment on Sept. 18, Romo Diaz pleaded not guilty, court records show. She was ordered held without bail, and her next court appearance is Friday.
The discovery of the body in the Civic trunk came a day after LAPD detectives found the severely decomposed body of Celeste Hernandez Rivas in the trunk of R&B singer D4Vd’s Tesla after it was towed from a Hollywood Hills street. Investigators say she had been dead for several weeks, and the cause of death remains to be determined.
