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Sam Penrod ReportingThe investigation continues today into the death of a nine-month old baby in Utah County. Police recovered the baby's body on Saturday afternoon, buried in a black plastic garbage bag in a shallow grave.
It was a tragic discovery on Saturday for police, but now they have information that they hope will bring some answers into what happened to this baby girl.
Lt. Darren Gilbert, Utah County Sheriff's Office: "We're obviously still very interested in locating both the mother and father of the nine-month old child. In addition, we are waiting for word back from the medical examiner on the cause of death."
Investigators were led to the body of Perla Reyes Lopez on Saturday afternoon by an informant, who detectives say is cooperating in the investigation into what happened to the girl. Her body was found in a shallow grave in an orchard west of Payson.
It was a tip from acquaintances of the couple that alerted authorities the girl had disappeared.
Investigators have recovered enough evidence they are now calling the case a criminal homicide investigation; however, they have not yet issued an arrest warrant for the parents, although they remain the focus of the investigation.
Lt. Darren Gilbert: "Right now we have a number of charges that we can file, but obviously we want to look at the official medical examiner's results and autopsy on the infant, and look at the whole picture before we go forward with any official charges."
We did learn today that the parents bought their bus tickets to Mexico on Friday October 20th. that was a week before their truck was discovered in the parking lot of the bus station in Provo. It means that they had a five day head start to flee from Utah County because authorities were not alerted to the situation until last Wednesday afternoon.
That's when police started looking for the couple. Authorities seem convinced the couple is in Mexico, but they say they still plan to pursue questioning them in this case.
